Sociology for the South : or, The failure of free society

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SOCIOLOGY FOR THE SOUTH OF THE
FAILURE OF FREE SOCIETY
By George Pitzhugh
1854

"Lincoln and I took such papers
as the Chicago Tribune, New York Tribune,
Anti-Slavery Standard, Emancipator, and
National Era- On the other side of the
question wb took the Charleston Mercury,
and the Richmond Enquirer. I also bought
a book called 'Sociology, 1 written by
one Fitzhugh, which defended and justified
slavery in every conceivable way. In
addition I purchased all the leading
histories of the slavery movement, and
other works which treated on that subject.
Lincoln himself never bought many books,
but he and I read those I have named.
After reading them we would discuss the
questions they touched upon and the
ideas they suggested, from our different
points of view. ■

(Herndon's Lincoln, page 363).
See also Beveridge, vol. 2, pages 30-31.

H. E. Barker

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SOCIOLOGY FOR THE SOUTH,

FAILURE OF FREE SOCIETY.

BY GEOKGE FITZHUGH

THE THING THAT HAS BEEN, IT IS THAT "WHICH SHALL BE ; AND THAT
WHICH IS DONE IS THAT WHICH SHALL BE DONE; AND THERE IS NO NEW
THING UNDER THE SUN.— Ecc. 1 : 9.

Naturam expelles furca, tamen usque recurret.— Horace.

RICHMOND, VA.
A. MORRIS, PUBLISHER

1854.

Entered according to an act of Congress, in the year 1854, by

GEORGE FITZIIUGH,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for

the Eastern District of Virginia.

C. H. WYNNE, PRINTER, RICHMOND.

TO THE PEOPLE OF THE SOUTH

We dedicate this little work to you, because it is a
zealous and honest effort to promote your peculiar inte-
rests. Society has been so quiet and contented in the
South — it has suffered so little from crime or extreme
poverty, that its attention has not been awakened to
the revolutionary tumults, uproar, mendicity and crime
of free society. Few are aware of the blessings they
enjoy, or of the evils from which they are exempt.

From some peculiarity of taste, we have for many
years been watching closely the perturbed workings of
free society. Its crimes, its revolutions, its sufferings
and its beggary, have led us to investigate its past
history, as well as to speculate on its future destiny.
This pamphlet has been hastily written, but is the
result of long observation, some research and much
reflection. Should it contain suggestions that will enlist
abler pens to show that free society is a failure and
its philosophy false, our highest ambition will be grat-
ified. Believing our positions on these subjects to be
true, we feel sanguine they are destined to final vin-
dication and triumph. We should have written a larger
work, had not our inexperience in authorship warned

IV DEDICATION.

us that we had better await the reception of this. We
may again appear in the character of writer before the
public ; but we shall not intrude, and would prefer that
others should finish the work which we have begun.
Treating subjects novel and difficult of comprehension,
we have designedly indulged in iteration; for we pre-
ferred offending the ear and the taste of the reader,
to confounding or confusing him by insufficient elabo-
ration. In truth, fine finish and rotundity are not
easily attained in what is merely argumentative and
controversial.

On all subjects of social science, Southern men, from
their position, possess peculiar advantages when they
undertake discussion. History, past and cotempora-
neous, informs them of all the phenomena of other
forms of society, and they see every day around them
the peculiarities and characteristics of slave society, of
which little is to be learned from books. The ancients
took it for granted that slavery was right, and never
attempted to justify it. The moderns assume that it
is wrong, and forthwith proceed to denounce it. The
South can lose nothing, and may gain, by the discussion.
She has, up to this time, been condemned without a
hearing.

With respect, your fellow-citizen,

GEO. FITZHUGH.

PREFACE.

"We hesitated some time in selecting the title of our
work. We did not like to employ the newly-coined
word Sociology. We could, however, find none other
in the whole range of the English language, that would
even faintly convey the idea which we wished to express.
We looked to the history of the term. We found that
within the last half century, disease, long lurking in
the system of free society, had broken out into a hun-
dred open manifestations. Thousands of authors and
schemers, such as Owen, Louis Blanc and Fourier, had
arisen, proposing each a different mode of treatment for
the disease which all confessed to exist. Society had
never been in such a state before. New exigencies in
its situation had given rise to new ideas, and to a new
philosophy. This new philosophy must have a name,
and as none could be found ready-made \o suit the
occasion, the term Sociology was compounded, of hybrid
birth, half Greek and half Latin, as the technical appel-
lative of the new-born science. In Europe, the term
is familiar as "household words." It grates harshly,
as yet, on Southern ears, because to us it is new and
superfluous — the disease of which it treats being un-

VI PREFACE.

known amongst us. But as our book is intended to
prove that we are indebted to domestic slavery for
our happy exemption from the social afflictions that
have originated this philosophy, it became necessary
and appropriate that we should employ this new word
in our title. The fact that, before the institution of
Free Society, there was no such term, and that it is
not in use in slave countries, now, shows pretty clearly
that Slave Society, ancient and modern, has ever been
in so happy a condition, so exempt from ailments, that
no doctors have arisen to treat it of its complaints, or
to propose remedies for their cure. The term, there-
fore, is not only appropriate to the subject and the
occasion, but pregnantly suggestive of facts and argu-
ments that sustain our theory.

CHAPTER I

FREE TRADE.

Political economy is the science of free society.
Its theory and its history alike establish this po-
sition. Its fundamental maxims, Laissez-faire and
" Pas trop gouverner" are at war with all kinds
of slavery, for they in fact assert that individuals
and peoples prosper most when governed least.
It is not, therefore, wonderful that such a science
should not have been believed or inculcated whilst
slavery was universal. Roman and Greek mas-
ters, feudal lords and Catholic priests, if con-
scientious, must have deemed such maxims false
and heritical, or if unconscientious, would find in
their self-interest sufficient reasons to prevent
their propagation. Accordingly we find no such
maxims current, no such science existing, until
slavery and serfdom were extinct and Catholic-
ism maimed and crippled, in the countries that
gave them birth. Men belonging to the higher
classes of society, and who neither feel nor appre-
hend the ills of penury or privation, are very apt
to think little of those ills, and less of the class
who suffer them. Especially is this the case with
unobservant, abstract thinkers and closet scholars,

8 FREE TRADE.

who deal with little of the world and see less of
it. Such men judge of mankind, their progress
and their happiness, by the few specimens sub-
jected to the narrow range of their experience
and observation. After the abolition of feudalism
and Catholicism, an immense amount of unfettered
talent, genius, industry and capital, was brought
into the field of free competition. The immediate
result was, that all those who possessed either of
those advantages prospered as they had never
prospered before, and rose in social position and
intelligence. At the same time, and from the
same causes, the aggregate wealth of society, and
probably its aggregate intelligence, were rapidly
increased. Such was no doubt part of the effects
of unfettering the limbs, the minds and consciences
of men. It was the only part of those effects that
scholars and philosophers saw or heeded. Here
was something new under the sun, which refuted
and rebuked the wisdom of Solomon. Up to this
time, one-half of mankind had been little better
than chattels belonging to the other half. A cen-
tral power, with branches radiating throughout
the civilized world, had trammeled men's con-
sciences, dictated their religious faith, and pre-
scribed the forms and modes of worship. All this
was done away with, and the new world just
started into existence was certainly making rapid
progress, and seemed to the ordinary observer

FREE TRADE. 9

to be very happy. About such a world, nothing
was to be found in books. Its social, its indus-
trial and its mor£l phenomena, seemed to be as
beautiful as they were novel. They needed, how-
ever, description, classification and arrangement.
Men's social relations and moral duties were
quite different under a system of universal lib-
erty and equality of rights, from what they had
been in a state of subordination and dependence
on the one side, and of power, authority and
protection on the other. The reciprocal duties
and obligations of master and slave, of lord and
vassal, of priest and layman, to each other, were
altogether unlike those that should be practiced
between the free and equal citizens of regene-
rated society. Men needed a moral guide, a new
philosophy of ethics ; for neither the sages of the
Gentiles, nor the Apostles of Christianity, had
foreseen or provided for the great light which
was now to burst upon the world. Moses, and
Solomon, and Paul, were silent as Socrates, Plato
and Aristotle, as to this social Millenium, and the
moral duties and obligations it would bring in its
train.

Until now, industry had been controlled and
directed by a few minds. Monopoly in its every
form had been rife. Men were suddenly called
on to walk alone, to act and work for themselves
without guide, advice or control from superior

10 FREE TRADE.

authority. In the past, nothing like it had oc-
curred ; hence no assistance could be derived from
books. The prophets themselves had overlooked
or omitted to tell of the advent of this golden
era, and were no better guides than the historians
and philosophers. A philosophy that should guide
and direct industry was equally needed with a
philosophy of morals. The occasion found and
made the man. For writing a one-sided philos-
ophy, no man was better fitted than Adam Smith.
He possessed extraordinary powers of abstraction,
analysis and generalization. He was absent, se-
cluded and unobservant. He saw only that pros-
perous and progressive portion of society whom
liberty or free competition benefitted, and mistook
its effects on them for its effects on the world.
He had probably never heard the old English
adage, "Every man for himself, and Devil take
the hindmost." This saying comprehends the
whole philoscphy, moral and economical, of the
" Wealth of Nations." But he and the political
economists who have succeeded him, seem never
to have dreamed that there would have been any
" hindmost." There can never be a wise moral
philosopher, or a sound philosophy, till some one
arises who sees and comprehends all the "things
in heaven and earth." Philosophers are the most
abstracted, secluded, and least observant of men.
Their premises are always false, because they see

FREE TRADE. 11

but few facts ; and hence their conclusions must
also be false. Plato and Aristotle have to-day
as many believers as Smith, Paley or Locke, and
between their times a hundred systems have arisen,
flourished for a time, and been rejected. There
is not a true moral philosophy, and from the na-
ture of things there never can be. Such a phi-
losophy has to discover first causes and ultimate
effects, to grasp infinitude, to deal with eternity
at both ends. Human presumption will often at-
tempt this, but human intellect can never achieve
it. We shall build up no system, attempt to
account for nothing, but simply point out what
is natural and universal, and humbly try to jus-
tify the ways of God to man.

Adam Smith's philosophy is simple and com-
prehensive, (teres et rotundus.) Its leading and
almost its only doctrine is, that individual well-
being and social and national wealth and pros-
perity will be best promoted by each man's eagerly
pursuing his own selfish welfare unfettered and
unrestricted by legal regulations, or governmental
prohibitions, farther than such regulations may be
necessary to prevent positive crime. That some
qualifications of this doctrine will not be found
in his book, we shall not deny ; but this is his
system. It is obvious enough that such a gov-
ernmental policy as this doctrine would result in,
would stimulate energy, excite invention and in-

12 FREE TRADE.

dustry, and bring into livelier action, genius, skill
and talent. It had done so before Smith wrote,
and it was no doubt the observation of those
effects that suggested the theory. His friends
and acquaintances were of that class, who, in the
war of the wits to which free competition invited,
were sure to come off victors. His country, too,
England and Scotland, in the arts of trade and
in manufacturing skill, was an over-match for
the rest of the world. International free trade
would benefit his country as much as social free
trade would benefit his friends. This was his
world, and had it been the only world his phi-
losophy would have been true. But there was
another and much larger world, whose misfor-
tunes, under his system, were to make the for-
tunes of his friends and his country. A part of
that world, far more numerous than his friends
and acquaintance was at his door, they were the
unemployed poor, the weak in mind or body,
the simple and unsuspicious, the prodigal, the dis-
sipated, the improvident and the vicious. Lais-
sez-faire and pas trop gouverner suited not them;
one portion of them needed support and protec-
tion ; the other, much and rigorous government.
Still they were fine subjects out of which the
astute and designing, the provident and avari-
cious, the cunning, the prudent and the indus-
trious might make fortunes in the field of free

FREE TRADE. 13

competition. Another portion of the world which
Smith overlooked, were the countries with which
England traded, covering a space many hundred
times larger than England herself. She was daily
growing richer, more powerful and intellectual,
by her trade, and the countries with which she
traded poorer, weaker, and more ignorant. Since
the vast extension of trade, consequent on the
discoveries of Columbus and Yasco de Gam a, the
civilized countries of Europe which carried on
this trade had greatly prospered, but the savages
and barbarians with whom they traded had be-
come more savage and barbarous or been exter-
minated. Trade is a war of the wits, in which
the stronger witted are as sure to succeed as the
stronger armed in a war with swords. Strength
of wit has this great advantage over strength of
arm, that it never tires, for it gathers new
strength by appropriating to itself the spoils of
the vanquished. And thus, whether between na-
tions or individuals, the war of free trade is con-
stantly widening the relative abilities of the weak
and the strong. It has been justly observed that
under this system the rich are continually grow-
ing richer and the poor poorer. The remark is
true as well between nations as between individ-
uals. Free trade, when the American gives a
bottle of whiskey to the Indian for valuable furs,
or the Englishman exchanges with the African

14 FREE TRADE.

blue-beads for diamonds, gold and slaves, is a
fair specimen of all free trade when unequals
meet. Free trade between England and Ireland
furnishes the latter an excellent market for her
beef and potatoes, in exchange for English man-
ufactures. The labor employed in manufacturing
pays much better than that engaged in rearing
beeves and potatoes. On the average, one hour
of English labor pays for two of Irish. Again,
manufacturing requires and encourages skill and
intelligence; grazing and farming require none.
But far the worst evils of this free trade remain
to be told. Irish pursuits depressing education
and refinement, England becomes a market for
the wealth, the intellect, the talent, energy and
enterprise of Ireland. All men possessing any of
these advantages or qualities retreat to England
to spend their incomes, to enter the church, the
navy, or the army, to distinguish themselves as
authors, to engage in mechanic or manufacturing
pursuits. Thus is Ireland robbed of her very
life's blood, and thus do our Northern States rob
the Southern.

Under the system of free trade a fertile soil,
with good rivers and roads as outlets, becomes
the greatest evil with which a country can be
afflicted. The richness of soil invites to agricul-
culture, and the roads and rivers carry off the
crops, to be exchanged for the manufactures of

FREE TRADE. 15

poorer regions, where are situated the centres of
trade, of capital and manufactures. In a few
centuries or less time the consumption abroad of
the crops impoverishes the soil where they are
made. No cities or manufactories arise in the
country with this fertile soil, because there is no
occasion. No pursuits are carried on requiring
intelligence or skill; the population is of neces-
sity sparse, ignorant and illiterate ; universal ab-
senteeism prevails ; the rich go off for pleasure
and education, the enterprising poor for employ-
ment. An intelligent friend suggests that, left
to nature, the evil will cure itself. So it may
when the country is ruined, if the people, like
those of Georgia, are of high character, and be-
take themselves to other pursuits than mere agri-
culture, and totally repudiate free trade doctrines.
Our friends' objection only proves the truth of
our theory. We are very sure that the wit of
man can devise no means so effectual to impov-
erish a country as exclusive agriculture. The
ravages of war, pestilence and famine are soon
effaced; centuries are required to restore an ex-
hausted soil. The more rapidly money is made
in such a country, enjoying free trade, the faster
it is impoverished, for the draft on the soil is
greater, and those who make good crops spend
them abroad ; those who make small ones, at
home. In the absence of free trade, this rich

16 FREE TRADE.

region must manufacture for itself, build cities,
erect schools and colleges, and carry on all the
pursuits and provide for all the common wants
of civilized man. Thus the money made at home
would be spent and invested at home; the crops
would be consumed at home, and each town and
village would furnish manure to fertilize the soil
around it. We believe it is a common theory
that, without this domestic consumption, no soil
can be kept permanently rich. A dense popu-
lation would arise, because it would be required ;
the rich would have no further occasion to leave
home for pleasure, nor the poor for employment.
The valley of the Great Salt Lake is cut off
by mountains from the rest of the world, except
for travel. Suppose it to continue so cut off, and
to be settled by a virtuous, enlightened people.
Every trade, every art, every science, must be
taught and practiced within a small compass and
by a small population, in order to gratify their
wants and their tastes. The highest, most dif-
fused and intense civilization, with great accumu-
lation of wealth, would be the necessary result.
But let a river like the Mississippi pass through
it. Let its inhabitants become merely agricultural,
and exchange their products for the manufac-
tures of Europe and the fruits of Asia, and would
not that civilization soon disappear, and with it

FREE TRADE. 17

the wealth and capital of the country ? Mere
agriculture requires no skill or education, few
and cheap houses, and no permanent outlay of
capital in the construction of the thousand edi-
fices needed in a manufacturing country. Be-
sides, the consumption of the crops abroad would
be cheating their lands of that manure which na-
ture intended for them. Soon the rich and en-
lightened, who owned property there, would, like
Irish landlords, live and spend their incomes
elsewhere.

The profits of exclusive agriculture are not more
than one-third of those realized from commerce
and manufactures. The ordinary and average
wages of laborers employed in manufactures and
mechanic trades are about double those of agri-
cultural laborers ; but, moreover, women and chil-
dren get good wages in manufacturing countries,
whose labor is lost in agricultural ones. But
this consideration, great as it is, shrinks to in-
significance compared with the intellectual supe-
riority of all other pursuits over agriculture.

The centralizing effects of free trade alone
would be sufficient to condemn it. The decline
of civilization under the Roman Empire was
owing solely to centralization. If political sci-
ence has at all advanced since the earliest an-
nals of history, that advance is the discovery
that each small section knows best its own inter-

18 FREE TRADE.

ests, and should be endowed with the most of
the functions of government. The ancients, in
the days of Herodotus, when the country around
the Levant and the Islands in the Mediterranean
were cut up into hundreds of little highly en-
lightened independent States, seem to have under-
stood the evils of centralization quite as well as
the moderns. At least their practice was wiser
than ours, whatever may have been their theory.
Political independence is not worth a fig without
commercial independence. The tribute which the
centres of trade, of capital, and of mechanical
and artistic skill, such as England and the North
exact from the nations they trade with, is more
onerous and more destructive of civilization than
that exacted from conquered provinces. Its ef-
fects everywhere are too obvious to need the
citation of proofs and instances. Social central-
ization arises from the laissez-faire system just
as national centralization. A few individuals pos-
sessed of capital and cunning acquire a power to
employ the laboring class on such terms as they
please, and they seldom fail to use that power.
Hence, the numbers and destitution of the poor
in free society are daily increasing, the numbers
of the middle or independent class diminishing,
and the few rich men growing hourly richer.

Free trade occasions a vast and useless, pro-
bably a very noxious waste of capital and labor,

FREE TRADE. 19

in exchanging the productions of different and
distant climes and regions. Furs and oils are
not needed at the South, and the fruits of the
tropics are tasteless and insipid at the North.
Providence has wonderfully adapted the produc-
tions of each section to the wants of man and
other animals inhabiting those sections. It is
probable, if the subject were scientifically inves-
tigated, it would be found that the productions
of one clime when used in another are injurious
and deleterious. The intercourse of travel and
the interchange of ideas it occasions advances
civilization. The intercourse of trade, by accus-
toming barbarous, savage and agricultural coun-
tries to depend daily more and more on the cen-
tres of trade and manufactures for their supplies
of every thing requiring skill or science for its
production, rapidly depresses civilization. On the
whole subject of civilization there is a prevalent
error. Man's necessities civilize him, or rather
the labor, invention and ingenuity needed to sup-
ply .them. Relieve him of the necessity to exert
those qualities by supplying through trade or
other means his wants, and he at once begins
to sink into barbarism. Wars are fine civilizers,
for all men dread violent death ; hence, among
barbarians, the implements of warfare are far su-
perior to any other of their manufactures, but
they lead the way to other ^improvements. The

20

FREE TRADE.

old adage, that " necessity is the mother of in-
vention," contains our theory ; for invention alone
begets civilization. Civilization is no foreign hot-
bed exotic brought from distant climes, but a
hardy plant of indigenous birth and growth.
There never was yet found a nation of white
savages ; their wants and their wits combine to
elevate them above the savage state. Nature,
that imposed more wants on them, has kindly
endowed them with superior intelligence to sup-
ply those wants.

Political economy is quite as objectionable,
viewed as a rule of morals, as when viewed as a
system of economy. Its authors never seem to
be aware that they are writing an ethical as well
as an economical code ; yet it is probable that
no writings, since the promulgation of the Chris-
tian dispensation, have exercised so controlling
an influence on human conduct as the writings
of these authors. The morality which they teach
is one of simple and unadulterated selfishness.
The public good, the welfare of society, the pros-
perity of one's neighbors, is, according to them,
best promoted by each man's looking solely to the
advancement of his own pecuniary interests.
They maintain that national wealth, happiness
and prosperity being but the aggregate of indi-
vidual wealth, happiness and prosperity, if each
man pursues exclusively his own selfish good, he

FREE TRADE. 21

is doing the most he can to promote the gen-
eral good. They seem to forget that men eager
in the pursuit of wealth are never satisfied with
the fair earnings of their own bodily labor, but
find their wits and cunning employed in over-
reaching others much more profitable than their
hands. Laissez-faire, free competition begets a
war of the wits, which these economists encour-
age, quite as destructive to the weak, simple and
guileless, as the war of the sword.

In a book on society, evincing much power
and originality of thought, by Stephen Pearl
Andrews, this subject is well handled. We an-
nex a short extract : "It follows, from what
has been said, that the value principle is the
commercial embodiment of the essential element
of conquest and war — war transferred from the
battle-field to the counter — none the less opposed,
however, to the spirit of christian morality, or
the sentiment of human brotherhood. In bodily
conflict, the physically strong conquer and sub-
ject the physically weak. In the conflict of trade,
the intellectually astute and powerful conquer
and subject those who are intellectually feeble,
or whose intellectual development is not of the
precise kind to fit them for the conflict of wits
in the matter of trade. With the progress of
civilization and development, we have ceased to
think that superior strength gives the right of

22 FREE TRADE.

conquest and subjugation. We have graduated
in idea out of the period of physical dominion.
We remain, however, as yet, in the period of
intellectual conquest or plunder. It has not been
questioned hitherto, as a general proposition, that
the man who has superior intellectual endow-
ments to others, has a right resulting therefrom
to profit thereby at the cost of others. In the
extreme applications of the admission only is the
conclusion denied. (That is, as he had before
said, 'You must not be too bad.' < Don't gouge
too deep.') In the whole field of what are de-
nominated the legitimate operations of trade,
there is no other law recognized than the rela-
tive 'smartness' or shrewdness of the parties,
modified at most by the sentimental precept sta-
ted above."

It begets another war in the bosom of society
still more terrible than this. It arrays capital
against labor. Every man is taught by political
economy that it is meritorious to make the best
bargains one can. In all old countries, labor is
superabundant, employers less numerous than la-
borers ; yet all the laborers must live by the
wages they receive from the capitalists. The
capitalist cheapens their wages; they compete
with and underbid each other, for employed they
must be on any terms. This war of the rich
with the poor and the poor with one another, is

FREE TRADE. 23

the morality which political economy inculcates.
It is the only morality, save the Bible, recog-
nized or acknowledged in free society, and is far
more efficacious in directing worldly men's con-
duct than the Bible, for that teaches self-denial,
not self-indulgence and aggrandizement. This
process of underbidding each other by the poor,
which universal liberty necessarily brings about,
has well been compared by the author of Alton
Locke to the prisoners in the Black Hole of
Calcutta strangling one another. A beautiful
system of ethics this, that places all mankind
in antagonistic positions, and puts all society at
war. What can such a war result in but the op-
pression and ultimate extermination of the weak?
In such society the astute capitalist, who is very
skilful and cunning, gets the advantage of every
one with whom he competes or deals; the sen-
sible man with moderate means gets the advan-
tage of most with whom he has business, but
the mass of the simple and poor are outwitted
and cheated by everybody.

Woman fares worst when thrown into this war-
fare of competition. The delicacy of her sex
and her nature prevents her exercising those
coarse arts which men do in the vulgar and pro-
miscuous jostle of life, and she is reduced to the
necessity of getting less than half price for her
work. To the eternal disgrace of human nature,

24 FREE TRADE.

the men who employ her value themselves on the
Adam Smith principle for their virtuous and sen-
sible conduct. "Labor is worth what it will
bring; they have given the poor woman more
than any one else would, or she would not have
taken the work." Yet she and her children are
starving, and the employer is growing rich by
giving her half what her work is worth. Thus
does free competition, the creature of free so-
ciety, throw the whole burden of the social fabric
on the poor, the weak and ignorant. They pro-
duce every thing and enjoy nothing. They are
"the muzzled ox that -treadeth out the straw."
In free society none but the selfish virtues are
in repute, because none other help a man in the
race of competition. In such society virtue loses
all her loveliness, because of her selfish aims.
Good men and bad men have the same end in view :
self-promotion, self-elevation. The good man is
prudent, cautious, and cunning of fence ; he knows
well, the arts (the virtues, if you please) which
enable him to advance his fortunes at the ex-
pense of those with whom he deals ; he does not
"cut too deep"; he does not cheat and swindle,
he only makes good bargains and excellent profits.
He gets more subjects by this course ; everybody
comes to him to be bled. He bides his time ;
takes advantage of the follies, the improvidence
and vices of others, and makes his fortune out

FREE TRADE. 25

of the follies and weaknesses of his fellow-men.
The bad man is rash, hasty, unskilful and im-
politic. He is equally selfish, but not half so
prudent and cunning. Selfishness is almost the
only motive of human conduct in free society,
where every man is taught that it is his first
duty to change and better his pecuniary situation.
The first principles of the science of political
economy inculcate separate, individual action, and
are calculated to prevent that association of labor
without which nothing great can be achieved; for
man isolated and individualized is the most help-
less of animals. We think this error of the econ-
omists proceeded from their adopting Locke's
theory of the social contract. We believe no her-
esy in moral science has been more pregnant of
mischief than this theory of Locke. It lies at
the bottom of all moral speculations, and if false,
must infect with falsehood all theories built on it.
Some animals are by nature gregarious and asso-
ciative. Of this class are men, ants and bees.
An isolated man is almost as helpless and ridic-
ulous as a bee setting up for himself. Man is
born a member of society, and does not form
society. Nature, as in the cases of bees and ants,
has it ready formed for him. He and society
are congenital. Society is the being — he one of
the members of that being. He has no rights
whatever, as opposed to the interests of society;

B

26 FREE TRADE.

and that society may very properly make any
use of him that will redound to the public good.
Whatever rights he has are subordinate to the
good of the whole ; and he has never ceded rights
to it, for he was born its slave, and had no rights
to cede.

Government is the creature of society, and may
be said to derive its powers from the consent of
the governed; but society does not owe its sove-
reign power to the separate consent, volition or
agreement of its members. Like the hive, it is
as much the work of nature as the individuals
who compose it. Consequences, the very opposite
of the doctrine of free trade, result from this doc-
trine of ours. It makes each society a band of
brothers, working for the common good, instead
of a bag of cats biting and worrying each other.
The competitive system is a system of antagonism
and war; ours of peace and fraternity. The first
is the system of free society ; the other that of
slave society. The Greek, the Roman, Judaistic,
Egyptian, and all ancient polities, were founded
on our theory. The loftiest patrician in those
days, valued himself not on selfish, cold individ-
uality, but on being the most devoted servant of
society and his country. In ancient times, the
individual was considered nothing, the State every
thing. And yet, under this system, the noblest
individuality was evolved that the world has ever

FREE TRADE. 27

seen. The prevalence of the doctrines of polit-
ical economy has injured Southern character,
for in the South those doctrines most prevail.
Wealthy men, who are patterns of virtue in the
discharge of their domestic duties, value them-
selves on never intermeddling, in public matters.
They forget that property is a mere creature of
law and society, and are willing to make no re-
turn for that property to the public, which by
its laws gave it to them, and which guard and
protect them in its possession.

All great enterprises owe their success to asso-
ciation of capital and labor. The North is in-
debted for its great wealth and prosperity to the
readiness with which it forms associations for all
industrial and commercial purposes. The success
of Southern farming is a striking instance of the
value of the association of capital and laborers,
and ought to suggest to the South the necessity
of it for other purposes.

The dissociation of labor and disintegration of
society, which liberty and free competition occa-
sion, is especially injurious to the poorer class ;
for besides the labor necessary to support the
family, the poor man is burdened with the care
of finding a home, and procuring employment,
and attending to all domestic wants and concerns.
Slavery relieves our slaves of these cares alto-
gether, and slavery is a form, and the very best

28 FREE TRADE.

form, of socialism. In fact, the ordinary wages
of common labor are insufficient to keep up sep-
arate domestic establishments for each of the poor,
and association or starvation is in many cases
inevitable. In free society, as well in Europe
as in America, this is the accepted theory, and
various schemes have been resorted to, all without
success, to cure the evil. The association of labor
properly carried out under a common head or
ruler, would render labor more efficient, relieve
the laborer of many of the cares' of household
affairs, and protect and support him in sickness
and old age, besides preventing the too great
reduction of wages by redundancy of labor and
free competition. Slavery attains all these results.
What else will ?

We find in the days of Sir Matthew Hale, a
very singular pamphlet attributed to him. It was
an attempt to prove that two healthy laborers,
marrying and having in the usual time four chil-
dren, could not at ordinary labor, and with ordi-
nary wages, support their family. The nursing,
washing, cooking and making clothes, would fully
occupy the wife. The husband, with the chances
of sickness and uncertainty of employment, would
have to support four. Such is the usual and
normal condition of free laborers. With six chil-
dren, the oldest say twelve years of age, their
condition would be worse. Or should the husband

FREE TRADE. 29

die, the family that remained would be still worse
off. There are large numbers of aged and infirm
male and female laborers ; so that as a class, it
is obvious, we think, that under ordinary circum-
stances, in old countries, they are incapable of
procuring a decent and comfortable support. The
wages of the poor diminish as their wants and
families increase, for the care and labor of at-
tending to the family leaves them fewer hours for
profitable work. With negro slaves, their wages
invariably increase with their wants. The master
increases the provision for the family as the family
increases in number and helplessness. It is a
beautiful example of communism, where each one
receives not according to his labor, but according
to his wants.

A maxim well calculated not only to retard the
progress of civilization, but to occasion its retro-
gression, has grown out of the science of political
economy. "The world is too much governed," has
become quite an axiom with many politicians.
Now the need of law and government is just in
proportion to man's wealth and enlightenment.
Barbarians and savages need and will submit to
but few and simple laws, and little of government.
The love of personal liberty and freedom from all
restraint, are distinguishing traits of wild men and
wild beasts. Our Anglo-Saxon ancestors loved
personal liberty because they were barbarians, but

30 FREE TRADE.

they did not love it half so much as North Amer-
ican Indians or Bengal tigers, because they were
not half so savage. As civilization advances, lib-
erty recedes : and it is fortunate for man that
he loses his love of liberty just as fast as he be-
comes more moral and intellectual. The wealthy,
virtuous and religious citizens of large towns enjoy
less of liberty than any other persons whatever,
and yet they are the most useful and rationally
happy of all mankind. The best governed coun-
tries, and those which have prospered most, have
always been distinguished for the number and
stringency of their laws. Good men obey supe-
rior authority, the laws of God, of morality, and
of their country ; bad men love liberty and vio-
late them. It would be difficult very often for
the most ingenious casuist to distinguish between
sin and liberty : for virtue consists in the per-
formance of duty, and the obedience to that law
or power that imposes duty, whilst sin is but the
violation of duty and disobedience to such law
and power. It is remarkable, in this connec-
tion, that sin began by the desire for liberty and
the attempt to attain it in the person of Satan
and his fallen angels. The world wants good go-
vernment and a plenty of it — not liberty. It is
deceptive in us to boast of our Democracy, to
assert the capacity of the people for self-govern-
ment, and then refuse to them its exercise. In

FREE TRADE.

si

New England, and in all our large cities, where
the people govern most, they are governed best.
If government be not too much centralized, there
is little danger of too much government. The
danger and evil with us is of too little. Carlyle
says of our institutions, that they are " anarchy
plus a street constable." We ought not to be
bandaged up too closely in our infancy, it might
prevent growth and development ; but the time
is coming when we shall need more of govern-
ment, if we would secure the permanency of our
institutions.

All men concur in the opinion that some gov-
ernment is necessary. Even the political econo-
mist would punish murder, theft, robbery, gross
swindling, &c; but they encourage men to com-
pete with and slowly undermine and destroy one
another by means quite as effective as those they
forbid. We have heard a distinguished member
of this school object to negro slavery, because
the protection it afforded to an inferior race
would perpetuate that race, which, if left free to
compete with the whites, must be starved out in
a few generations. Members of Congress, of the
Young American party, boast that the Anglo-
Saxon race is manifestly destined to eat out all
other races, as the wire-grass destroys and takes
the place of other grasses. Nay, they allege this
competitive process is going on throughout all

32 FREE TRADE.

nature ; the weak are everywhere devouring the
strong; the hardier plants and animals destroy-
ing the weaker, and the superior races of man
exterminating the inferior. They would chal-
lenge our admiration for this war of nature, by
which they say Providence is perfecting its own
work — getting rid of what is weak and indiffer-
ent, and preserving only what is strong and
hardy. We see the war, but not the improve-
ment. This competitive, destructive system has
been going on from the earliest records of his-
tory ; and yet the plants, the animals, and the
men of to-day are not superior to those of four
thousand years ago. To restrict this destructive,
competitive propensity, man was endowed with
reason, and enabled to pass laws to protect the
weak against the strong. To encourage it, is to
encourage the strong to oppress the weak, and
to violate the primary object of all government.
It is strange it should have entered the head of
any philosopher to set the weak, who are the
majority of mankind, to competing, contending
and fighting with the strong, in order to improve
their condition.

Hobbes maintains that "a state of nature is a
state of war." This is untrue of a state of na-
ture, because men are naturally associative; but
it is true of a civilized state of universal liberty,
and free competition, such as Hobbes saw around

FREE TRADE. 33

him, and which no doubt suggested his theory.
The wants of man and his history alike prove
that slavery has always been part of his social
organization. A less degree of subjection is in-
adequate for the* government and protection of
great numbers of human beings.

An intelligent English writer, describing society
as he saw it, uses this language :

" There is no disguising from the cool eye of
philosophy, that all living creatures exist in a
state of natural warfare ; and that man (in hos-
tility with all) is at enmity also with his own
species ; man is the natural enemy of man ; and
society, unable to change his nature, succeeds but
in establishing a hollow truce by which fraud is
substituted for violence."

Such is free society, fairly portrayed; such are
the infidel doctrines of political economy, when
candidly avowed. Slavery and Christianity bring
about a lasting peace, not "a hollow truce." But
we mount a step higher. We deny that there
is a society in free countries. They who act
each for himself, who are hostile, antagonistic
and competitive, are not social and do not con-
stitute a society. We use the term free society,
for want of a better ; but, like the term free
government, it is an absurdity : those who are
governed are not free — those who are free are
not social.

CHAPTER II.

FAILURE OF FREE SOCIETY AND RISE OF SOCIALISM.

The phenomena presented by the vassals and
villiens of Europe after their liberation, were the
opposite of those exhibited by the wealthy and
powerful classes. Pauperism and beggary, we are
informed by English historians, were unknown till
the villiens began to~ escape from their masters,
and attempted to practise a predatory and no-
madic liberty. A liberty, we should infer from
the descriptions we can get of it, very much like
that of [domestic animals that have gone wild —
the difference in favor of the animals being that
nature^had made provision for them, but had made
none for the villiens. The new freemen were
bands of thieves and beggars, infesting the country
and disturbing its peace. Their physical^ condi-
tion was worse than when under the rule of the
Barons, their masters, and their moral condition
worse also, for liberty * had made^them from ne-
cessity thieves and murderers. It was necessary
to retain them in slavery, not only to support and
sustain them and to prevent general mendicity,
but equally necessary in order to govern them
and prevent crime. The advocates of universal

FAILURE OF FREE SOCIETY, &C. 35

liberty concede that the laboring class enjoy
more material comfort, are better fed, clothed
and housed, as slaves, than as freemen. The sta-
tistics of crime demonstrate that the moral su-
periority of the slave over the free laborer is
still greater than his superiority in animal well-
being. There never can be among slaves a class
so degraded as is found about the wharves and
suburbs of cities. The master requires and en-
forces ordinary morality and industry. We very
much fear, if it were possible to indite a faith-
ful comparison of the conduct and comfort of our
free negroes with that of the runaway Anglo-
Saxon serfs, that it would be found that the ne-
groes have fared better and committed much less
crime than the whites. But those days, the 14th
and 15th centuries, were the halcyon days of
vagabond liberty. The few that had escaped from
bondage found a wide field and plenty of sub-
jects for the practice of theft and mendicity.
There was no law and no police adequate to
restrain them, for until then their masters had
kept them in order better than laws ever can.
But those glorious old times have long since
passed. A bloody code, a standing army and
efficient police keep them quiet enough now.
Their numbers have multiplied a hundred fold,
but their poverty has increased faster than their
numbers. Instead of stealing and begging, and

36 FAILURE OF FREE SOCIETY

living idly in the open air, they work fourteen
hours a day, cooped up in close rooms, with foul
air, foul water, and insufficient and filthy food,
and often sleep at night crowded in cellars or
in garrets, without regard to sex.

In proceeding to prove that this is a correct
account of the effects in England of liberating the
laboring class, we are at much difficulty how to se-
lect from the mass of testimony that at every turn
presents itself to us. Vv r e are not aware that any
one disputes the fact that crime and pauperism
throughout Western Europe increased pari passu
with liberty, equality and free competition. We
know of but a single respectable authority that
disputes the fact that this increase is directly at-
tributable to free competition or liberty. Even the
Edinburgh Review, hitherto the great champion
of political economy and free competition, has
been silent on the subject for several years. With
strange inconsistency, the very men who assert
that universal liberty has, and must ever, from
the nature of things, increase crime, mendicity
and pauperism among the laboring class, main-
tain that slavery degrades this very class whom
it preserves from poverty and crime. The ele-
vation of the scaffold is the only moral or physi-
cal elevation that they can point to which dis-
tinguishes the condition of the free laborer from
his servile ancestor. The peasantry of England,

AND RISE OF SOCIALISM. 37

in the days of Cressey, Agincourt and Shrews-
bury, when feudalism prevailed, were generally
brave, virtuous, and in the enjoyment of a high
degree of physical comfort — at least, that com-
fort differed very little from that of their lords
and masters. This same peasantry, when Charles
Edward with three thousand Highlanders invaded
England, had become freemen and cowards. Starv-
ing Frenchmen will at least fight, but starving
Chartists only bluster. How slaA r ery could de-
grade men lower than universal liberty has done,
it is hard to conceive ; how it did and would
again preserve them from such degradation, is well
explained by those who are loudest in its abuse.
A consciousness of security, a full comprehen-
sion of his position, and a confidence in that po-
sition, and the absence of all corroding cares and
anxieties, makes the slave easy and self-assured
in his address, cheerful, happy and contented,
free from jealousy, malignity, and envy, and at
peace with all around him. His attachment to
his master begets the sentiment of loyalty, than
which none more purifies and elevates human na-
ture. This theory of the moral influences of
slavery is suggested and in part borrowed from
Alexandre Dumas' "French Milliner." He, de-
scended from a negro slave, and we may pre-
sume prejudiced against slavery, speaks in glow-
ing terms of its- happy iufluence on the lives and

38 FAILURE OF FREE SOCIETY

manners of the Russian serfs. He draws a con-
trast between their cheerfulness and the wretch-
edness of the French laboring class, and attri-
butes solely to the feeling of security which
slavery induces, their enviable cheerfulness.

The free laborer rarely has a house and home
of his own ; he is insecure of employment ; sick-
ness may overtake him at any time and deprive
him of the means of support ; old age is certain
to overtake him, if he lives, and generally finds
him without the means of subsistence ; his family
is probably increasing in numbers, and is help-
less and burdensome to him. In all this there
is little to incite to virtue, much to tempt to
crime, nothing to afford happiness, but quite
enough to inflict misery. Man must be more
than human, to acquire a pure and a high mo-
rality under such circumstances.

In free society the sentiments, principles, feel-
ings and affections of high and low, rich and
poor,, are equally blunted and debased by the
continual war of competition. It begets rival-
ries, jealousies and hatreds on all hands. The
poor can neither love nor respect the rich, who,
instead of aiding and protecting them, are en-
deavoring to cheapen their labor and take away
their means of subsistence. The rich can hardly
respect themselves, when they reflect that wealth
is the result of avarice, caution, circumspection

AND RISE OF SOCIALISM. 39

and hard dealing. These are the virtues which
free society in its regular operation brings forth.
Its moral influence is therefore no better on the
rich than on the poor. The number of laborers
being excessive in all old countries, they are con-
tinually struggling with, scandalizing and under-
bidding each other, to get places and employ-
ment. Every circumstance in the poor man's sit-
uation in free society is one of harassing care,
of grievous temptation, and of excitement to an-
ger, envy, jealousy and malignity. That so many
of the poor should nevertheless be good and pure,
kind, happy and high-minded, is proof enough
that the poor class is not the worst class in so-
ciety. But the rich have their temptations, too.
Capital gives them the power to oppress ; selfish-
ness offers the inducement, and political economy,
the moral guide of the day, would justify the
oppression. Yet there are thousands of noble
and generous and disinterested men in free so-
ciety, who employ their wealth to relieve, and not
to oppress the poor. Still these are exceptions
to the general rule. The effect of such society
is to encourage the oppression of the poor.

The ink was hardly dry with which Adam Smith
wrote his Wealth of Nations, lauding the benign
influences of free society, ere the hunger and
want and nakedness of that society engendered a
revolutionary explosion that shook the world to

40 FAILURE OF FREE SOCIETY

its centre. The starving artisans and laborers,
and fish-women and needle-women of Paris, were
the authors of the first French revolution, and
that revolution was everywhere welcomed, and
spread from nation to nation like fire in the
prairies. The French armies met with but a for-
mal opposition, until they reached Russia. There,
men had homes and houses and a country to fight
for. The serfs of Russia, the undisciplined Cos-
sacks, fought for lares and penates, their homes,
their country, and their God, and annihilated an
army more numerous than that of Xerxes, and
braver and better appointed than the tenth legion
of Caesar. What should Western European poor
men fight for ? All the world was the same to
them. They had been set free to starve, with-
out a place to rest their dying heads or to inter
their dead bodies. Any change they thought
would be for the better, and hailed Buonaparte
as a deliverer. But the nature of the evil was
not understood ; there were some remnants of feu-
dalism, some vigor in the Catholic church ; these
Buonaparte swept away, and left the poor with-
out a stay or a hope. Buonaparte is conquered
and banished, universal peace restored; commerce,
mechanic arts, manufactures and agriculture re-
vive and flourish ; invention is stimulated, indus-
try urged on to its utmost exertion. Never
seemed the world so prosperous, so happy, so

AND RISE OF SOCIALISM. 41

progressive. But only seemed! Those awful sta-
tistics unfold the sad tale that misery and crime
and poverty are on the increase still. The pris-
ons are filled, the poor houses and the penal
colonies supplied too fast, and the gallows ever
pendant with its subject. In 1830, Paris starves
again, builds barricades, continues hungry, and
hesitates what next to do. Finally sets up a
new king, no better than the one she has ex-
pelled. Revolution follows revolution with elec-
tric speed throughout great part of Western Eu-
rope. Kings are deposed, governments changed:
soon new kings put in their places, and things
subside — not quietly — into the status quo ante
helium. All this, while millions of the poor are
fleeing from Europe as men fly from an infected
plague spot, to seek their fortunes in other climes
and regions. Another eighteen years of hunger,
of crime, of riots, strikes, and trades unions,
passes over free society. In 1848 the drama of
1880 is almost literally re-enacted. Again Paris
starves, builds barricades, and expels her king.
Again Western Europe follows her example. By
this time, however, men had discovered that po-
litical changes would not cure the diseases of
society. The poor must have bread; government
must furnish it. Liberty without bread was not
worth fighting for. A Republic is set up in
Paris that promises employment and good wages

42 FAILURE OF FREE SOCIETY

to every body. The experiment is tried and fails
in a week. No employment, except transplant-
ing trees and levelling mounds, could be found,
and the treasury breaks. After struggling and
blundering and staggering on through various
changes, Louis Napoleon is made Emperor. He
is a socialist, and socialism is the new fashion-
able name of slavery. He understands the dis-
ease of society, and has nerve enough for any
surgical operation that may be required to cure
it. His first step in socialism was to take the
money of the rich to buy wheat for all. The
measure was well-timed, necessary and just. He
is now building houses on the social plan for
working men, and his Queen is providing nurse-
ries and nurses for the children of the working
women, just as we Southerners do for our negro
women and children. It is a great economy.
Fourier suggested it long after Southerners had
practiced it. During these times there was a
little episode in Ireland — Ireland, the freest coun-
try in the world, where law is violated every
day, mocked at and derided, whence the rich
and the noble have emigrated, where all are poor,
all equal, and all idle. A few thousands only
had usually starved annually ; but the potatoe
crop failed ; they had no feudal lords to buy
other food for them, and three hundred thou-
sand starved in a single season. No slave or

AND RISE OF SOCIALISM. 43

serf ever did starve, unless he were a runaway.
Irishmen, although they love liberty to distrac-
tion, have lost their taste for starving. They are
coming en masse to America, and in a few years,
at the present rate of emigration, will leave the
island without inhabitants. The great and in-
creasing emigration from free society in Europe
can only be accounted for on the ground that
they believe their social system so rotten that
no mere political change can help them — for a
political revolution can be had on twenty-four
hours' notice.

The Chartists and Radicals of England would
in some way subvert and re-construct society.
They complain of free competition as a crying
evil, and may be classed with the Socialists. The
high conservative party called Young England
vainly endeavors, by preaching fine sentiments, to
produce that good feeling between the rich and
the poor, the weak and the powerful, which slavery
alone can bring about. Liberty places those classes
in positions of antagonism and war. Slavery iden-
tifies the interests of rich and poor, master and
slave, and begets domestic affection on the one
side, and loyalty and respect on the other. Young
England sees clearly enough the character of the
disease, but is not bold enough to propose an
adequate remedy. The poor themselves are all
practical Socialists, and in some degree pro-slavery

44 FAILURE OF FREE SOCIETY

men. They unite in strikes and trades unions,
and thus exchange a part of their liberties in
order to secure high and uniform wages. The
exchange is a prudent and sensible one ; but they
who have bartered off* liberty, are fast verging
towards slavery. Slavery to an association is not
always better than slavery to a single master.
The professed object is to avoid ruinous under-
bidding and competition with one another ; but
this competition can never cease whilst liberty
lasts. Those who wish to be free must take lib-
erty with this inseparable burden. Odd-Fellows'
societies, temperance societies, and all other soci-
ties that provide for sick and unfortunate mem-
bers, are instances of Socialism. The muse in
England for many years has been busy in com-
posing dissonant laborer songs, bewailing the hard-
ships, penury and sufferings of the poor, and in-
dignantly rebuking the cruelty and injustice of
their hard-hearted and close-fisted employers.

Dickens and Bulwer denounce the frame-work of
society quite as loudly as Carlyle and Newman;
the two latter of whom propose slavery as a remedy
for existing evils. A large portion of the clergy
are professed Socialists, and there is scarcely a
literary man in England who is not ready to pro-
pose radical and organic changes in her social
system. Germany is full of Communists ; social
discontent is universal, and her people are leaving

AND RISE OF SOCIALISM. 45

e?i viasse for America — hopeless of any ameliora-
tion at home for the future. Strange to tell, in
the free States of America too, Socialism and
every other heresy that can be invoked to make
war on existing institutions, prevail to an alarming
extent. Even according to our own theory of
the necessity of slavery, we should not suppose
that that necessity would be so soon felt in a
new and sparsely-settled country, where the supply
of labor does not exceed the demand. But it is
probable the constant arrival of emigrants makes
the situation of the laborer at the North as pre-
carious as in Europe, and produces a desire for
some change that shall secure him employment
and support at all times. Slavery alone can effect
that change : and towards slavery the North and
all Western Europe are unconsciously marching.
The master evil they all complain of is free
competition — which is another name for liberty.
Let them remove that evil, and they will find
themselves slaves, with all the advantages and
disadvantages of slavery. They will have attained
association of labor, for slavery produces asso-
ciation of labor, and is one of the ends all Com-
munists and Socialists desire. A well-conducted
farm in the South is a model of associated labor
that Fourier might envy. One old woman nurses
all the children whilst the mothers are at work ;
another waits on the sick/ in a house set aside

46 FAILURE OP FREE SOCIETY

for them. Another washes and cooks, and a
fourth makes and mends the clothing. It is a
great economy of labor, and is a good idea of
the Socialists. Slavery protects the infants, the
aged and the sick ; nay, takes far better care of
them than of the healthy, the middle-aged and the
strong. They are part of the family, and self-
interest and domestic affection combine to shelter,
shield and foster them. A man loves not only
his horses and his cattle, which are useful to him,
but he loves his dog, which is of no use. He
loves them because they are his. What a wise
and beneficent provision of Heaven, that makes
the selfishness of man's nature a protecting Eegis
to shield and defend wife and children, slaves and
even dumb animals. The Socialists propose to
reach this result too, but they never can if they
refuse to march in the only road Providence has
pointed out. Who will check, govern and control
their superintending authority ? Who prevent his
abuse of power ? Who can make him kind, tender
and affectionate, to the poor, aged, helpless, sick
and unfortunate ? Qui custodiat custodes ? Na-
ture establishes the only safe and reliable checks
and balances in government. Alton Locke de-
scribes an English farm, where the cattle, the
horses and the sheep are fat, plentifully fed and
warmly housed ; the game in the preserves and
the fish in the pond carefully provided for ; and

AND RISE OF SOCIALISM. 47

two freezing, shivering, starving, half-clad boys,
who have to work on the Sabbath, are the slaves
to these animals, and are vainly endeavoring to
prepare their food. Now it must have occurred
to the author that if the boys had belonged to the
owner of the farm, they too would have been
well-treated, happy and contented. This farm is
but a miniature of all England ; every animal is
well-treated and provided for, except the laboring
man. He is the slave of the brutes, the slave
of society, produces everything and enjoys no-
thing. Make him the slave of one man, instead
of the slave of society, and he would be far better
off. None but lawyers and historians are aware
how much of truth, justice and good sense, there
is in the notions of the Communists, as to the
community of property. Laying no stress on the
too abstract proposition that Providence gave the
world not to one man, or set of men, but to all
mankind, it is a fact that all governments, in
civilized countries, recognize the obligation to
support the poor, and thus, in some degree, make
all property a common possession. The poor laws
and poor houses of England are founded on com-
munistic principles. Each parish is compelled to
support its own poor. In Ireland, this obligation
weighs so heavily as in many instances to make
farms valueless ; the poor rates exceeding the
rents. But it is domestic slavery alone that can

48 FAILURE OF FREE SOCIETY

establish a safe, efficient and humane community
of property. It did so in ancient times, it did
so in feudal times, and does so now, in Eastern
Europe, Asia and America. Slaves never die of
hunger ; seldom suffer want. Hence Chinese sell
themselves when they can do no better. A South-
ern farm is a sort of joint stock concern, or social
phalastery, in which the master furnishes the cap-
ital and skill, and the slaves the labor, and divide
the profits, not according to each one's in-put,
but according to each one's wants and necessities.

Socialism proposes to do away with free com-
petition ; to afford protection and support at all
times to the laboring class ; to bring about, at
least, a qualified community of property, and to
associate labor. All these purposes, slavery fully
and perfectly attains.

To prove the evil effects, moral, social and eco-
nomic, of the emancipation of feudal slaves or
villiens, and how those evil effects gave birth to
Socialism, we quote first from the Pictorial His-
tory of England :

" To the period (15th century,) immediately
preceding the present, belongs the origin of Eng-
lish pauperism, as well as of the legislation on the
subject of the poor. So long as the system of
villienage was maintained in its integrity, there
could be no paupers in the land ; that is to say,
no persons left destitute of the means of subsist-

AND RISE OF SOCIALISM. 49

ence, except beggary or public alms. The prin-
ciple of that institution was, that every individual
who had nothing else, had at least a right of food
and shelter from the landed proprietor whose
bondsman he was. The master was not more en-
titled to the services of his villien, than the villien
was to the maintenance of himself and his family,
at the expense of his master. This has of abso-
lute necessity been the law in every country in
which slavery has existed. * * ' * * But as
soon as the original slavery of the English la-
boring population begun to be exchanged for free-
dom, and villienage gradually, and at last gene-
rally passed away in the manner stated in the
last book, the working man, now his own master,
was of course left in all circumstances to his own
resources ; and when either want of employment,
or sickness, or the helplessness of old age came
upon him, if he had not saved something from his
former earnings, and had no one to take care of
him from motives of affection or compassion, his
condition was as unprovided for as that of the
fowls of the heavens. But men will not starve,
whilst they can either beg or steal ; hence, the
first appearance that the destitute poor, as a class
of the community, make in our annals, is in the
character of thieves and mendicants, sometimes
enforcing their demands by threats or violence."—-
Vol. 2d, pages 262, 263.
c

50 FAILURE OF FREE SOCIETY

Such is the description of free society at its
birth, by authors who hate and denounce slavery.
We will proceed to prove from like authority,
that the number of mendicants and thieves has
increased with accelerating speed from that day
to this.

We find in Hume's History of England, treating
of the discontents of the people in the reign of
Edward VI., the following language :

" There is no abuse in civil society so great
as not to be attended with a variety of beneficial
consequences ; and in the beginnings of reforma-
tion, the loss of these advantages is always felt
very sensibly, while the benefit resulting from the
change is the slow effect of time, and is seldom
perceiv3d by the bulk of the nation. Scarce any
institution can be imagined less favorable in the
main to the interests of mankind, than that of
monks and friars ; yet was it followed by many
good effects, which having ceased by the sup-
pression of the monasteries, were much regretted
by the people of England. The monks always
residing in their convents in the centre of their
estates, spent their money in the provinces, and
among their tenants, afforded a ready market for
commodities, and were a sure resource to the poor
and indigent ; and though their hospitality and
charity gave too much encouragement to idleness,
and prevented the increase of public riches, yet

AND RISE OF SOCIALISM. 51

did it provide to many a relief from the extreme
pressure of want and necessity."

In the Pictorial History of England, under the
head of the Condition of the People, about the
16th and 17th centuries, we find crime and pau-
perism still on the increase, and hundreds of es-
says and books written and many acts of Par-
liament passed on this perplexing and growing
evil in free society. But it was after Napoleon
had made a dead level of Western European so-
ciety, a sort of " tabula rasa," by destroying the
remnants of feudalism and crippling and cramping
the Catholic Church, that liberty and free com-
petition were first given free scope and elbow-
room. Not till then had the doctrines, that
"might makes right" and "every man for him-
self, and devil take the hindmost," been brought
into full play. The natural consequence was, that
the strong conquered and devoured the weak much
faster than they had ever done before. The world
of the political economists, the rich, the astute,
the avaricious, the prudent, the circumspect and
hard-hearted, started forward with railroad speed
and railroad recklessness. The world of the So-
cialists, (vastly increased in numbers,) the poor,
the weak, ignorant, generous and improvident,
ran backwards quite as fast as the other world
went forward. Almost every middle-aged man
who can read a newspaper, is aware, that whilst

52 FAILURE OF FREE SOCIETY

the aggregate wealth of civilized mankind has

on o

increased more rapidly since the fall of Napoleon
than it ever did before, and whilst the discoveries
and inventions in physical science have rapidly
lessened the amount of labor necessary to procure
human subsistence and comfort, yet these advan-
tages have been monopolized by the few, and the
laboring millions are in worse condition (in free
society) than they ever were before. On this sub-
ject we shall quote from two able articles in Black-
wood, not because our positions need proof, bat
because these quotations will throw much light
on the character of the disease under which free
society is suffering, and show that protection of
some kind is imperiously demanded to shield the
masses from the grinding oppression of universal
liberty, free competition and laissez-faire, and to
show that it is the carrying into practical opera-
tion the theories of the political economists, or
free trade men, that has occasioned the unexam-
pled progress and prosperity of the few who are
strong, and the appalling and increasing crime and
destitution of the many, who are weak. Further,
these quotations will sustain and illustrate our
doctrine that the political economists have taken
partial views of society, and have mistaken the
good luck and success of their friends for the
general condition and fortune of mankind. Black-
wood seems to contemplate protection against for-

AND RISE OF SOCIALISM. 53

eign competition as an adequate remedy. We
leave it to the intelligent reader to say, whether
protection against social and domestic competition
is not quite as necessary — and nothing but slavery
can afford this latter protection.

In a review of Alton Locke in Blackwood, Nov.
No. 1850, the following passages will be found :

" No man with a human heart in his bosom,
unless that heart is utterly indurated and depraved
by the influence of mammon, can be indifferent to
the fate of the working classes. Even if he were
not urged to consider the awful social questions
which daily demand our attention in this per-
plexing and bewildered age, by the impulses of
humanity or by the call of Christian duty, the
lower motive of interest alone should incline him
to serious reflection on a subject which involves
the well-being, both temporal and eternal, of thou-
sands of his fellow-beings, and possibly the per-
manence of order and tranquility in this realm
of Great Britain. Our civil history during the
last thirty years of peace, resembles nothing, which
the world has yet seen or which can be found
in the records of civilization. The progress which
has been made in the mechanical sciences is of
itself a' most equivalent to a revolution. The whole
face of society has been altered ; old employments
have become obsolete, old customs have been al-
tered or remodelled, and old institutions have

54 FAILURE OF FREE SOCIETY

undergone innovation. The modern citizen thinks
and acts differently from his fathers. What to
them was object of reverence, is to him subject
of ridicule ; what they were accustomed to prize
and honor, he regards with undisguised contempt.
All this we call improvement, taking no heed
the while whether such improvement has fulfilled
the primary condition of contributing to and in-
creasing the welfare and prosperity of the people.
Statistical books are written to prove how enor-
mously we have increased in wealth ; and yet, side
by side with Mr. Porter's bulky tome, you will
find pamphlets containing ample and distinct evi-
dence that hundreds of thousands of our indus-
trious fellow-countrymen are at this moment fam-
ishing for lack of employment, or compelled to
sell their labor for such wretched compensation,
that the pauper's dole is by many regarded with
absolute envy. Dives and Lazarus elbow one
another in the street, and our political economists
select Dives as the sole type of the nation. San-
itary commissioners are appointed to "whiten the
outside of the sepulchre ; and during the operation
their stomachs are made sick by the taint of the rot-
tenness within. The reform of Parliament is, com-
paratively speaking, a matter of yesterday ; and
yet the operatives are petitioning for the charter !
These are stern realities, grave facts, which it
is impossible to gainsay. What may be the re-

AND RISE OF SOCIALISM. 55

suit of them, unless some adequate remedy can
be provided, it is impossible with certainty to
predict; but unless we are prepared to deny the
doctrine of that retribution which has been di-
rectly revealed to us from above, and of which
the history of neighboring states affords us so
many striking examples, we can hardly expect to
remain unpunished for what is truly a national
crime. The offence, indeed, according to all the
elements of human calculation, is likely to bring
its own punishment. It cannot be that society
can exist in tranquility, or order be permanently
maintained, so long as a large portion of the
working classes, of the hard-handed men whose
industry makes capital move and multiply itself,
are exposed to the operation of a system that
makes their position less tolerable than that of
Egyptian bondsmen. To work is not only a
duty, but a privilege ; but to work against hope,
to toil under the absolute pressure of despair, is
the most miserable lot that the imagination can
possibly conceive. It is, in fact, a virtual abro-
gation of that freedom which every Briton is
taught to consider his birthright, but which now,
however well it may sound as an abstract term,
is practically, in the case of thousands, placed
utterly beyond their reach.

"We shall not probably be suspected of any in-
tention to inculcate radical doctrines. We have

56 FAILURE OF FREE SOCIETY

no sympathy, but the reverse, with the quacks,
visionaries and agitators, who -make a livelihood
by preaching disaffection in our towns and cities,
and who are the worst enemies of the people
whose cause they pretend to advocate. We de-
test the selfish views of the Manchester school
of politicians, and we loathe that hypocrisy which,
under the pretext of reforming, would destroy
the institutions of the country. But, if it be
true, as we believe it to be, that the working
and producing classes of the community are suf-
fering unexampled hardship, and that not of a
temporary and exceptional kind, but from the
operation of some vicious and baneful element
that has crept into our social system, it then be-
comes our duty to attempt to discover the actual
nature of the evil ; and, having discovered that,
to consider seriously what cure it is possible to
apply." * * * "Here is a question urgently
presenting itself to the consideration of all think-
ing men ; a question which concerns the welfare of
hundreds of thousands ; a question which has been
evaded by statesmen so long as they dared to do
so with impunity; but which now can be no-longer
evaded : that question being, whether any possi-
ble means can be found for ameliorating and im-
proving the condition of the working classes of
Great Britain, by rescuing them from the cruel
effects of that competition which makes each man

AXD RISE OF SOCIALISM. 57

the enemy of his fellow ; which is annually dri-
ving from our shores crowds of our best and
most industrious artisans; which consigns women
from absolute indigence to infamy ; dries up the
most sacred springs of affection in the heart;
crams the jail and the poor-house; and is eat-
ing like a fatal canker into the very heart-blood
of society." This subject was deemed by Black-
wood so important, that it was resumed in a
subsequent number of that review, " The Dan-
gers of the Country," March number, 1851. We
will not fatigue the reader's attention with ex-
tracts from that article, which is a most able and
interesting one ; but will merely state that, after
giving tedious and careful statistics, showing the
rapid and unexampled increase of crime and pau-
perism in Great Britain since 1819, a period in
which the prosperity of the upper classes was as
remarkable as the continually increasing debase-
ment and misery of the lower, the Reviewer con-
cludes with these emphatic words : " But this we
do say, and with these words we nail our colors
to the mast, Protection must be restored, or
the British Empire will be dissolved." Now
the evil complained of is free competition, and
nothing short of some modification of slavery can
give protection against free competition. To leave
no room for cavil or doubt as to the truth of
our positions, that pauperism commenced and crime

58 FAILURE OF FREE SOCIETY

was increased with the birth of the liberty of the
laboring class, and that each extension of liberty
has immediately occasioned an accelerated in-
crease of poverty and crime, we wish to adduce
authorities, not only of the highest character, but
representing all parties and shades of opinion.
We now quote from the April number, 1854, of the
Westminster Review on " The Results of the Cen-
sus." After treating of the breaking up of the
feudal system and dissolution of the Catholic
church, the writer thus proceeds : " These inter-
ests having gone down and another class having
arisen, is there any other to be considered ? Yes,
an enormous one — an appalling one — the pauper
interest. Long before the dissolution of the mo-
nasteries, the pauperism of the country had be-
come an almost unmanageable evil. It began with
the abolition of serfage ; and the monasteries ab-
sorbed as much as they could of an existing evil,
increasing it all the while. From the fourteenth
century there had been laws to restrain vagrancy ;
and in the sixteenth it had increased 'to the mar-
vellous disturbance of the common weal of this
realm.' Beggars went about, 'valiant and sturdy,'
in great 'routs and companies.' The vagrants
were to be put in prison, branded and whipped ;
the clergy were to press all good citizens to give
alms; and all who w^ere able must find employ-
ment for those who could work. Then came the

AXD RISE OF SOCIALISM. 59

compulsory tax : and then the celebrated 43d Eli-
zabeth; and all apparently in vain. The lower
class had not risen, generally speaking, with the
middle ; and there was as wide an interval between
that middle class and the pauper banditti of the
realm, as there once was between the landed class
and the serfs." Pauper banditti ! And this is
what two hundred years of liberty makes of white
laborers. And now four hundred years have
passed over, and their condition is getting daily
worse ; they are quitting their homes — no, not
homes, for they have none — but flying from the
land that has persecuted them to every wild and
desert corner of the earth.

The cotemporaneous appearance of Alton Locke
and a vast number of pamphlets and essays on
the subject of the sufferings and crimes of the la-
boring class in Great Britain, forms a most inter-
esting epoch in the history of social science. No
one who pays the least attention to the subject,
will doubt that the doctrines and philosophy of
socialism or communism, which just then became
rife in England, owed their birth to the increased
and increasing sufferings of the poor, which that
philosophy proposes to remove. The Edinburgh
Review, in its January number, 1851, discourses
as follows: "As long as socialism was confined
to the turbulent, the wild and the disreputable,
and was associated with tenets which made it

60 FAILURE OF FREE SOCIETY

disgusting and disreputable, perhaps the wisest
plan was to pass it over in silence, and suffer it
to die of its own inherent weakness. But now,
when it has appeared in a soberer guise and puri-
fied from much of its evil intermixtures ; when it
has shown itself an actual and energetic reality
in France; when it has spread among the intel-
ligent portions of the working classes in our own
country more extensively than is commonly be-
lieved ; when it raises its head under various
modifications, and often as it were unconsciously,
in the disquisitions which issue from the periodi-
cal press ; when a weekly journal, conducted with
great ability as to every thing but logic, is de-
voted to its propagation ; and when clergymen of
high literary reputation give in their scarcely
qualified adherence, and are actively engaged in
reducing to practice their own peculiar modifica-
tion of the theory, it would be no longer kindly
or decorous to ignore a subject which is so deeply
interesting to thousands of our countrymen." In
speaking of the doctrines of the socialists, the
writer goes on to say : " The position they take
is this : Society is altogether out of joint. Its
anomalies, its disfigured aspect, its glaring ine-
qualities, the sufferings of the most numerous por-
tions of it, are monstrous, indefensible, and yearly
increasing. Mere palliations, mere sham improve-
ments, mere gradual ameliorations will not meet

AXD RISE OF SOCIALISM. 61

its wants ; it must be remodelled, not merely fur-
bished up. Political economy has hitherto had it
all its own way ; and the shocking condition into
which it has brought us, shews that its principles
must be strangely inadequate or unsound. The
miseries of the great mass of the people, the in-
ability to find work, or to obtain in return for
such work as can be performed in reasonable time
and by ordinary strength a sufficiency of the com-
forts and necessaries of life, may all be traced
to one source — competition instead of combina-
tion. The antagonistic and regenerative principle
which must be introduced, is association." No as-
sociation, no efficient combination of labor can be
effected till men give up their liberty of action
and subject themselves to a common despotic head
or ruler. This is slavery, and towards this so-
cialism is moving. The above quotation and the
succeeding one go to prove the positions with
which we set out : that free trade or political
economy is the science of free society, and so-
cialism the science of slavery. The writer from
whom we are quoting sees and thus exposes the
tendency of socialism to slavery : " The/e is the
usual jumble between the fourteenth century and
the nineteenth ; the desire to recall the time when
the poor were at once the serfs and the proteges
of the rich, and to amalgamate it with the days
of chartism, when the poor assert their equality

bZ FAILURE OF FREE SOCIETY

and insist upon their freedom. It is not thus
that irritation can be allayed or miseries removed
or wrongs redressed. The working classes and
their advocates must decide on which of the two
positions they will take their stand : whether they
will be cared for as dependents and inferiors, or
whether, by wisdom, self-control, frugality and toil,
they will fight their independent way to dignity
and well-being ; whether they will step back to
a stationary and degraded past, or strive onward
to the assertion of their free humanity ? But it
is not given to them, any more than to other
classes, to combine inconsistent advantages : they
cannot unite the safety of being in leading strings,
with the liberty of being without them ; the right
of acting for themselves, with the right to be saved
from the consequences of their actions ; they must
not whine because the higher classes do not aid
them, and refuse to let these classes direct them ;
they must not insist on the duty of government
to provide for them, and deny the authority of
government to control them ; they must not de-
nounce laissez-faire, and denounce a paternal des-
potism likewise." The greatest of all commun-
ists, if communist he be, Prouclhon, has also seen
and exposed this tendency of socialism to slavery.
He is a thorough-going enemy of modern free so-
ciety ; calls property a thief; and would, he says,
establish anarchy in place of government. But

AND RISE OF SOCIALISM. 63

we have not been able to understand his system,
if any he has.

The North British Review stands probably as
high for its ability, sound political views and lite-
rary integrity, as any other periodical whatever.
We will cite copiously from its article on " Litera-
ture and the Labor Question," February No. 1851,
not merely for the weight of its authority and the
force of its arguments, but chiefly because the
writer of that article sums up with some fulness
and great ability the proofs of the failure of so-
ciety as now constituted in Western Europe, and
of the almost universal abandonment of political
economy, the philosophy of that society :

" Servants of this class, and constituting by far
the most numerous portion of every community,
are the j^'oletaires, or speaking more restrictedly,
the working men, who earn to-day's bread by to-
day's labor. They are the veritable descendants
of those who in ancient times were the slaves ;
with but few differences their social position is the
same. Despite sating banks, temperance socie-
ties, and institutions for mutual improvement, the
characteristics of this class, like that of the lit-
erary class, is, and probably ever will be, pecu-
niary insouciance. From week to week, these
thousands live, now in work and now out of work,
as careless of to-morrow as if Benjamin Franklin
had never lived, entering at one end of the jour-

64 FAILURE OF FREE SOCIETY

ney of existence and issuing at the other, without
ever having at any one moment accumulated five
superfluous shillings."

A beautiful commentary on the dignity of labor.

As to the prevalence of discontent with free
society, and of socialistic and revolutionary doc-
trines in France, the writer employs the following
language :

u One cannot now take up a French book-seller's
list of advertisements, without seeing the titles of
publications of all kinds and sizes devoted to the
elucidation of social questions. ' L' Organization
du Travail;' ' Destinie Sociale ;' c Etudes sur la
principales causes de la Misei-e ;' ' De la condition
physique and morale des jeune Ouvriens.' Such
are some of the titles of a class of French books
sufficient already to form a library. The thing, in
fact, has become a profession in France. Men of
all kinds and of all capacities — men who do not
.care one farthing about the condition of the people,
or about the condition of any body except them-
selves, as well as men of reaM goodness and phi-
lanthropy, now write books full of statistics about
the working classes, and of plans for diminishing
the amount of social evil. And so too in this
country. The ' Condition of England Question'
has become the target at which every shallow wit-
ling must aim his shaft. All literature seems to be
flowing towards this channel, so that there seems

AND RISE OF SOCIALISM. 65

to be a likelihood that we shall soon have no lite-
rature at all but a literature of social -reference."

Whilst all this hubbub and confusion is going
on in France and England, occasioned by the in-
tensest suffering of the free laborers, we of the
South and of all slaveholding countries, have been
" calm as a summer's evening," quite unconscious
of the storm brewing around us. Yet those people
who confess that their situation is desperate, insist
that we shall imitate their institutions, starve our
laborers, multiply crime, riots and pauperism, in
order, we suppose, to try the experiment of Mor-
monism, Socialism or Communism. Try it first,
yourselves !

The following passage — and we have quoted a
similar one from Blackwood — is a distinct assertion
of the complete failure of free society. It is the
admission of witnesses of the highest character,
corroborated by the testimony of all classes of so-
ciety — for the poor, by their strikes, trade unions,
temperance societies, odd-fellow societies, and in-
surance societies, speak as eloquently on this sub-
ject as the rich and the learned.

" ' Alton Locke' is, upon the whole, as powerful
a literary expression as exists of the general con-
viction, shared by all classes alike, that the country
has arrived at a condition when something extra-
ordinary, whatever it is, must be decided on and
done, if society is to be saved in Great Britain.

66 FAILURE OF FREE SOCIETY

As such, therefore, it is a book that should be
welcome to all parties."

Now listen to the conclusion, and see whether
the practical remedy proposed be not Slavery.
We believe there is not an intelligent reformist
in the world who does not see the necessity of
slavery — who does not advocate its re-institution
in all save the name. Every one of them con-
curs in deprecating free competition, and in the
wish and purpose to destroy it. To destroy it
is to destroy Liberty, and where liberty is de-
stroyed, slavery is established.

" At what conclusion have we arrived ? We
have pointed out as one of the most remarkable
signs of the times, the appearance of a literature
of social reference, originating in and then farther
promoting a repprochement between the two ex-
tremes of society, men of letters and the working
classes. We have examined, and to some extent
analyzed, the two most conspicuous examples that
have been recently furnished in this country, of
this new direction and intention of literature.
And what has been the result? The result has
been, that in both cases, we have found ourselves
conducted by the writers in question to one point :
the pronunciation of the terrible phrase, i Organi-
zation of Labor,' and the contemplation of a pos-
sible exodus, at no very distant period, out of
the Egypt of our present system, of competition

AND RISE OF SOCIALISM. 67

and laissez-faire, into a comparative Canaan of
some kind of co-operative socialism. Such is the
fact : startling it may be, but deserving to be
fairly stated and apprehended. Right or wrong,
we believe this to be a true version and fair his-
tory of our current social literature. We have
elicited it from an examination of but two exam-
ples ; but we believe the most extensive examina-
tion would not invalidate it. Collect all the books,
pamphlets and papers that constitute our literature
of social reference, or assemble all our men of
letters, who have contributed to that literature,
so as to learn their private aspirations and opin-
ions with respect to the social problem, and the
last word, the united note would still be : ' The
Organization of Labor on the associative prin-
ciple.' There are of course dissentients, but such
is the note of the majority; and so far as the
note is of value, it may be asserted that a decree
of the literary faculty of the country has gone
forth, declaring the avater of political economy,
if not as a science of facts, at least as a supreme
rule of government, to be near its close."

Now strip these and the extracts from Black-
wood of their pompous verbiage, and they become
express assertions that free society has failed, and
that that which is not free must be substituted.
Every Southern slave has an estate in tail, inde-
feasible by fine and recovery, in the lands of the

08 FAILURE OF FREE SOCIETY

South. If his present master cannot support him,
he must sell him to one who can. Slaves, too,
have a valuable property in their masters. Abo-
litionists overlook this — overlook the protective in-
fluence of slavery, its distinguishing feature, and
no doubt the cause of its origin and continuance,
and abuse it as a mere engine of oppression. In-
fant negroes, sick, helpless, aged and infirm ne-
gres, are simply a charge to their master ; he has
no property in them in the common sense of the
term, for they are of no value for the time, but
they have the most invaluable property in him.
He is bound to support them, to supply all their
wants, and relieve them of all care for the present
or future. And well, and feelingly and faithfully
does he discharge his duty. What a glorious thing
to man is slavery, when want, misfortune, old age,
debility and sickness overtake him. Free society,
in its various forms of insurance, in its odd-fellow
and temperance societies, in its social and com-
munistic establishments, and in ten thousand other
ways, is vainly attempting to attain this never-
failing protective, care-taking and supporting fea-
ture of slavery. But it will blunder and flounder
on in vain. It cannot put a heart and feeling into
its societies and its corporations. God makes mas-
ters and gives them affections,, feelings and inte-
rests that secure kindness to the sick, aged and
dying slave. Man can never inspire his ricketty

AND RISE OF SOCIALISM. GO

institutions with those feelings, interests and affec-
tions. Say the Abolitionists — " Man ought not to
have property in man." What a dreary, cold,
bleak, inhospitable world this would be with such
a doctrine carried into practice. Men living to
themselves, like owls and wolves and lions and
birds and beasts of prey? I<o: "Love thy neigh-
bor as thyself," And this can't be done till he
has a property in your services as well as a place
in your heart. Homo sum, humani nihil a me
alienum puto! This, the noblest sentiment ever
uttered by uninspired man, recognises the great
truth which lies at the foundation of all society —
that every man has property in his fellow-man !
It is because that adequate provision is not made
properly to enforce this great truth in free society,
that men are driven to the necessity of attempting
to remedy the defects of government by voluntary
assocations, that carry into definite and practical
operation this great and glorious truth. It is be-
cause such defects do not exist in slave society,
that we are not troubled with strikes, trade unions,
phalasteries, communistic establishments, Mormon-
ism, and the thousand other isms that deface and
deform free society. Socialism, in some form or
other, is universal in free society, and its single
aim is to attain the protective influence oi slavery.
St. Simon would govern his social establishments
by savants, more despotic than masters. He would

70 FAILURE OF FREE SOCIETY

Lave no law but the will of the savant. He would
have a despot without the feelings and the inte-
rests of a master to temper his authority. Fourier
proposes some wild plan of passional attraction as
a substitute for government, and Louis Blanc is
eloquent about "attractive labor." All human ex-
perience proves that society must be ruled not by
mere abstractions, but by men of flesh and blood.
To attain large industrial results, it must be vigor-
ously and severely ruled. Socialism is already
slavery in all save the master. It had as well
adopt that feature at once, as come to that it must
to make its schemes at once humane and efficient.
Socialism in other forms than that of slavery is
not a new thing. It existed in Crete, in Sparta,
in Peru, and was practiced by the Essenes in
Judea. All ancient institutions were very much
tinged with its doctrines and practices, not only in
the relation of master and slave, which was uni-
versal, but in the connection of the free citizens
to one another and to the government. The doc-
trines of individuality, of the social contract and
of laissez-faire, had not then arisen. Our only
quarrel with Socialism is, that it will not honestly
admit that it owes its recent revival to the failure
of universal liberty, and is seeking to bring about
slavery again in some form.

The little experiment of universal liberty that
has been tried for a little while in a little corner

AND RISE OF SOCIALISM. 71

of Europe, has resulted in disastrous and appalling
failure. Slavery has been too universal not to
be necessary to nature, and man struggles in vain
against nature. " Expel nature with a fork, and
she will again return;" or, in the eloquent lan-
guage of Solomon — " The thing that hath been,
it is that that shall be ; and that which is done, is
that which shall be done ; and there is no new
thing under the sun."

Xo one who reads a newspaper can but have
observed that every abolitionist is either an agra-
rian, a socialist, an infidel, an anti-renter, or in
some way is trying to upset other institutions of
society, as well as slavery at the South. The
same reasoning that makes him an abolitionist soon
carries him further, for he finds slavery in some
form so interwoven with the whole frame-work of
society, that he invariably ends by proposing to
destroy the whole edifice and building another on
entirely new principles. Some, like Fourier, are
honest enough to admit that it must also be built
with new materials. There is too much human
nature in man for their purposes. Part of that
nature is the continual effort to make others work
and support him whilst he is idle ; in other words,
to enslave them, and yet not be charged with their
support. But Fourier and his disciples promise
most positively that their system will in a few
generations cleanse mankind of their mundane

72 FAILURE OF FREE SOCIETY, &C.

dross, expel every particle of human nature, and
that then their system will work admirably. Until
then, we would advise them to procure good prac-
tical overseers from Virginia to govern their pha-
lanxes and phalasteries ; and we venture to affirm,
if they try one, they will never be willing to ex-
change him for that whip-syllabub, sentimental
ruler, "passional attraction." Passional attraction
is the very thing government has chiefly to check
and punish, and we suspect it will be so to the
end of the chapter. The argument seems fairly,
however, to have arrived at this point : All concur
that free society is a failure. We slaveholders say
you must recur to domestic slavery, the oldest, the
best and most common form of Socialism. The
new schools of Socialism promise something better,
but admit, to obtain that something, they must
first destroy and eradicate man's human nature.

CHAPTER III.

SUBJECT CONTINUED.

" There was a time,
That when the hrains were out, the man would die I"

Cotemporaneously with the explosion of his fa-
vorite theory, Mr. Calhoun folded his robe around
him with imperial dignity, and expired in the arms
of an admiring Senate. Mr. Macaulay and the
Edinburgh Review still cling to life with the quer-
ulous pertinacity of a pair of cats. " Othello's oc-
cupation's gone 1" Why does Othello still linger
on the sta^e ?

Since writing our last chapter, the Edinburgh
Review for July, 1854, has reached us. It con-
tains a critique on " An Essay on the Relations
between Labor and Capital. R. C. Morrison."
The failure of free society we think is admitted in
that article. We think the writer further admits
that it cannot work successfully ^without a radical
change in human nature. The remedy suggested
is very simple ; chronic and complex as the diseases
are which it proposes to cure, yet that remedy
requires the poor to give up the use of stimulants.
We do not think with Lord Byron, "that man
being reasonable should get drunk." We think,
on the contrary, it is the most irrational act in
r>

74 FAILURE OF FEEE SOCIETY

the world. But change the line a little, and it
is true: "Man being natural, will get drunk."
Any theory of society founded on the disuse of
stimulants by the poor, is Utopian and false. At
all events, it involves the necessity of a total
change in man's nature, for men have ever used
stimulants, and until such change will ever use
them. If the grog and tobacco rations were with-
drawn, would not a smaller number of laborers do
the work that a larger number do now, and thus
throw a number out of employment? When capi-
talists discovered that laborers could live on less
than they do now, would they not reduce their
wages ? "Would not famine be more common, when
there was no room for retrenchment, no tobacco
and liquor to substitute for bread, when bread rose
in price ? Such is the theory of Smith and Mc-
Culloch, who attribute famines in Ireland to the
too great economy of the peasant. We think the
proposed remedy would aggravate the disease ; but
it suffices for our purpose, that the disease is ad-
mitted. The failure of laissez-faire, of political
economy, is admitted now by its last and lingering
votary. Free society stands condemned by the
unanimous testimony of all its enlightened mem-
bers. We will proceed to quote from the article
on which we are commenting :

"A few years ago, when distress among our
working people, if not general, was at least chronic

AND RISE OF SOCIALISM. 75

and severe, when the public mind was at once
crowded by startling disclosures of misery, and
distracted by still more startling projects for re-
lieving it, the book before us would have excited
immediate and extensive attention. A few years
hence, probably, when the stirring excitement and
the noble enterprise of war shall have again given
place to the more beneficent pursuits of peace, and
when possibly a check to our prosperous career,
arising out of war, shall have again awakened our
vigilance to those symptoms of social disorder
which we are apt to neglect in ordinary times, the
book may take the rank it appears to us to de-
serve. * * * In truth, the great problem it
proposes to discuss and elucidate is one of more
permanent and mighty interest than any other,
however much transient convulsions may throw it
into the back-ground, or transient intervals of re-
pose and comfort may lull us into the belief that
it is solved or shelved. It is not long since public
attention was thoroughly aroused to all that was
deplorable, indefensible and dangerous in the con-
dition of the mass of the population ; we were
daily made aware, that as a fact, the supply of
labor was usually in excess of the demand, and
that much local and occasional suffering was the
consequence ; but it was not till the Irish famine,
and the similar visitation in the "Western High-
lands, the severe distresses in the manufacturing

76 FAILURE OF FREE SOCIETY

districts of England in 1847 and 1848, and the
painful and undeniable, even though over-colored,
revelations of the state of many thousand artisans
of various trades in the metropolis, had alarmed
us into inquiry and reflection, that the public mind
began to comprehend either the magnitude and
imminence of the evil it had to investigate, or the
difficulty and complication of the problem it was
called upon to solve."

The reviewer and the reviewed very successfully
show, after this, that a movement of the laboring
class would be attended with more danger in Great
Britain than any where else, because in Great
Britain this class compose nine-tenths of the nation.
In France, where lands are minutely divided, the
conservative interest preponderates. There are
thirty thousand land-holders in England, three
thousand in Scotland, and eleven millions in France.
The state of society in Great Britain is pregnant
with disastrous change and revolution. Emio-ration
affords a temporary vent and relief, but emigration
may cease, and then this complex and difficult so-
cial problem will recur. The laboring class are
about to assume the reins of government. They
know their own numbers and strength. All the
reasoning in the world will not satisfy them that
they who produce every thing should starve, in
order that a handful of lords and capitalists should
live in wanton waste and idle luxury. Mr. Mor-

AND RISE OF SOCIALISM. 77

rison will not persuade tliem that it is a high
crime and misdemeanor for them to use a little
beer and tobacco, for they make every ounce of
tobacco and pint of beer that is consumed in the
kingdom. A social revolution is at hand. Dr.
Sanorrado could not arrest it with his " bleeding
and warm water,'-' much less Mr. Morrison with
his cold water remedy. The teetotalers should
give him a brass medal, for they, like he, propose
to remedjr all the evils that human flesh is heir
to, with abstinence and cold water. The Ho-
meopathists will dispute with the Hydropathists the
propriety of conferring on him an honorary title.
His infinitesimal dose ranking him with the former,
and its ingredient, cold water, allying him with
the latter practitioners. The reviewer admits that
Great Britain is in danger of a far worse social
revolution than ever visited France, and has no
preventive to suggest except to stop the "grog
ration." Now, slavery is the only thing in the
world that can enforce temperance. The army
and navy are the only reliable temperance societies
in Great Britain. Men who have lost self-control
enlist in them to be controlled by superior au-
thority. They often prolong their lives thereby.
Slaves, like soldiers and sailors, are temperate, be-
cause temperance is enforced on them. If free
laborers will use too much grog and tobacco, it
proves they arc not ripe for freedom.

78 FAILURE OF FREE SOCIETY

But we will forego and give np every word of
proof that we have deduced from history to shew
the failure of free society. In the present and
preceding chapters, we know we have adduced suf-
ficient historical evidence of that failure, but we
forego all that. We take a single admission of this
reviewer — " that the supply of labor is usually in
excess of the demand." The admission of course
only applies to Great Britain, but it is well known
that in free continental. Europe the excess is still
greater. Now, is it necessary for us to do more
than state the admission to prove that free society
is absurd and impracticable ? Part of the laboring
class are out of employment and actually starving,
and in their struggle to get employment, reducing
to the minimum of what will support human ex-
istence those next above them who are employed.
This next and employed class are the needle-wo-
men, and coarse and common male laborers. The
two. classes and their dependents constitute one-
half of mankind. Theoretically, this half of man-
kind is always at starvation point in free society.
Practically, the proportion of the suffering desti-
tute is much greater. We are astounded that con-
clusions so obviously and immediately resulting
from admitted premises, should not have occurred
to every one, especially when horrid facts beck-
oned the way to the conclusion.

AND RISE OP SOCIALISM. 79

This whole article in the Edinburgh is unfeeling
and libellous, unjust and untrue. The greatest
destitution and pauperism excludes the use of stim-
ulants. The working women suffer most, and they
use few stimulants. The starving peasantry of
Scotland, France and Ireland, can rarely indulge
in them. It is the well-paid laborers who, after
the excessive fatigues of the day, indulge in the
pipe and the bottle. Fatigued, maddened and des-
perate with the prospect before them, some little
charity should be extended to their feelings. Such
wholesale abuse of the laboring class will but pre-
cipitate the social revolution which the reviewer
dreads,

CHAPTER IV.

THE TWO PHILOSOPHIES.

In the three preceding chapters we have shewn
that the world is divided between two philosophies.
The one the philosophy of free trade and univer-
sal liberty — the philosophy adapted to promote the
interests of the strong, the wealthy and the wise.
The other, that of socialism, intended to protect
the weak, the poor and the ignorant. The latter
is almost universal in free society ; the former pre-
vails in the slaveholding States of the South.
Thus we see each section cherishing theories at
war with existing institutions. The people of the
North and of Europe are pro-slavery men in the
abstract ; those of the South are theoretical abo-
litionists. This state of opinions is readily ac-
counted for. The people in free society feel the
evils of universal liberty and free competition,
and desire to get rid of those evils. They pro-
pose a remedy, which is in fact slavery ; but
they are wholly unconscious of what they are
doing, because never having lived in the midst of
slavery, they know not what slavery is. The citi-
zens of the South, who have seen none of the
evils of liberty and competition, but just enough of
those agencies to operate as healthful stimulants to

THE TWO PHILOSOPHIES. 81

energy, enterprise and industry, believe free com-
petition to be an unmixed good.

The South, quiet, contented, satisfied, looks upon
all socialists and radical reformers as madmen or
knaves. It is as ignorant of free society as that
society is of slavery. Each section sees one side of
the subject alone ; each, therefore, takes partial and
erroneous views of it. Social science will never
take a step in advance till some Southern slave-
holder, competent for the task, devotes a ]ife-time
to its study and elucidation ; for slavery can only
be understood by living in its midst, whilst thou-
sands of books daily exhibit the minutest work-
ings of free society. The knowledge of the nu-
merous theories of radical reform proposed in Eu-
rope, and the causes that have led to their pro-
mulgation, is of vital importance to us. Yet we
turn away from them with disgust, as from some-
thing unclean and vicious. We occupy high van-
tage ground for observing, studying and classify-
ing the various phenomena of society ; yet we do
not profit by the advantages of our position. We
should do so, and indignantly hurl back upon our
assailants the charge, that there is something
wrong and rotten in our system. From their
own mouths we can show free society to be a
monstrous abortion, and slavery to be the healthy,
beautiful and natural being which they are trying,
unconsciously, to -adopt.

CHAPTER Y.

NEGRO SLAVERY.

We have already stated that we should not at-
tempt to introduce any new theories of govern-
ment and of society, but merely try to justify old
ones, so far as we could deduce such theories from
ancient and almost universal practices. Now it
has been the practice in all countries and in all
ages, in some degree, to accommodate the amount
and character of government control to the wants,
intelligence, and moral capacities of the nations
or individuals to be governed. A highly moral
and intellectual people, like the free citizens of
ancient Athens, are best governed by a democracy.
For a less moral and intellectual one, a limited
and constitutional monarchy will answer. For a
people either very ignorant or very wicked, no-
thing short of military despotism will suffice. So
among individuals, the most moral and well-in-
formed members of society require no other gov-
ernment than law. They are capable of reading
and understanding the law, and have sufficient self-
control and virtuous disposition to obey it. Chil-
dren cannot be governed by mere law; first, because
they do not understand it, and secondly, because

NEGRO SLAVERY. 83

they are so much under the influence of impulse,
passion and appetite, that they want sufficient self-
control to be deterred or governed by the distant
and doubtful penalties of the law. They must be
constantly controlled by parents or guardians,
whose will and orders shall stand in the place of
law for them. Very wicked men must be put
into penitentiaries ; lunatics into asylums, and the
most wild of them into straight jackets, just as
the most wicked of the sane are manacled with
irons ; and idiots must have committees to govern
and take care of them. Now, it is clear the
Athenian democracy would not suit a negro nation,
nor will the government of mere law suffice for
the individual negro. He is but a grown up child,
and must be governed as a child, not as a lunatic
or criminal. The master occupies towards him the
place of parent or guardian. We shall not dwell
on this view, for no one will differ with us who
thinks as we do of the negro's capacity, and we
might argue till dooms-day, in vain, with those
who have a high opinion of the negro's moral
and intellectual capacity.

Secondly. The negro is improvident ; will not
lay up in summer for the wants of winter ; will
not accumulate in youth for the exigencies of age.
He would become an insufferable burden to society.
Society has the right to prevent this, and can
only do so by subjecting him to domestic slavery.

84 NEGRO SLAVERY.

In the last place, the negro race is inferior to
the white race, and living in their midst, they
would be far outstripped or outwitted in the
chase of free competition. Gradual but certain ex-
termination would be their fate. We presume the
maddest abolitionist does not think the negro's
providence of habits and money-making capacity
at all to compare to those of the whites. This de-
fect of character would alone justify enslaving him,
if he is to remain here. In Africa or the West
Indies, he would become idolatrous, savage and
cannibal, or be devoured by savages and cannibals.
At the North he would freeze or starve.

We would remind those who deprecate and sym-
pathize with negro slavery, that his slavery here
relieves him from a far mere cruel slavery in
Africa, or from idolatry and cannibalism, and
every brutal vice and crime that can disgrace hu-
manity ; and that it christianizes, protects, sup-
ports and civilizes him ; that it governs him far
better than free laborers at the North are gov-
erned. There, wife-murder has become a mere
holiday pastime ; and where so many wives are
murdered, almost all must be brutally treated.
Nay, more : men who kill their wives or treat them
brutally, must be ready for all kinds of crime,
and the calendar of crime at the North proves
the inference to be correct. Negroes never kill
their wives. If it be objected that legally they

NEGRO SLAVERY. 85

have no wives, then we reply, that in an experi-
ence of more than forty years, we never yet heard
of a ne^ro man killing a nei^ro woman. Our ne-
groes are not only better oiF as to physical com-
fort than free laborers, but their moral condition
is better.

But abolish negro slavery, and how much of
slavery still remains. Soldiers and sailors in Eu-
rope enlist for life ; here, for five years. Are
they not slaves who have not only sold their liber-
ties, but their lives also ? And they are worse
treated than domestic slaves. No domestic affec-
tion and self-interest extend their regis over them.
No kind mistress, like a guardian angel, provides
for them in health, tends them in sickness, and
soothes their dying pillow. Wellington at Water-
loo was a slave. He was bound to obey, or would,
like admiral Bying, have been shot for gross mis-
conduct, and might not, like a common laborer,
quit his work at any moment. He had sold his
liberty, and might not resign without the consent
of his master, the king. The common laborer may
quit his work at any moment, whatever his con-
tract ; declare that liberty is an inalienable right,
and leave his employer to redress by a useless
suit for damages. The highest and most honor-
able position on earth was that of the slave Wel-
lington ; the lowest, that of the free man who
cleaned his boots and fed his hounds. The Afri-

86 NEGEO SLAVERY.

can cannibal, caught, christianized and enslaved,
is as much elevated by slavery as was Welling-
ton. The kind of slavery is adapted to the men
enslaved. Wives and apprentices are slaves ; not
in theory only, but oTten in fact. Children are
slaves to their parents, guardians and teachers.
Imprisoned culprits are slaves. Lunatics and
idiots are slaves also. Three-fourths of free so-
ciety are slaves, no better treated, when their
wants and capacities are estimated, than negro
slaves. The masters in free society, or slave so-
ciety, if they perform properly their duties, have
more cares and less liberty than the slaves them-
selves. "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou earn
thy- bread!" made all men slaves, and such all
good men continue to be.

Negro slavery would be changed immediately
to some form of peonage, serfdom or villien-
age, if the negroes were sufficiently intelligent
and provident to manage a farm. No one would
have the labor and trouble of management, if
his negroes would pay in hires and rents one-
half what free tenants pay in rent in Europe.
Every negro in the South would be soon liberated,
if he would take liberty on the terms that white
tenants hold it. The fact that he cannot enjoy
liberty on such terms, seems conclusive that he is
only fit to be a slave.

But for the assaults of the abolitionists, much
would have been done ere this to regulate and

NEGRO SLAVERY. 87

improve Southern slavery. Our negro mechanics
do not work so hard, have many more privileges
and holidays, and are better fed and clothed than
field hands, and are yet more valuable to their
masters. The slaves of the South are cheated of
their rights by the purchase of Northern manufac-
tures -which they could produce. Besides, if vre
would employ our slaves in the coarser processes
of the mechanic arts and manufactures, such as
brick making, getting and hewing timber for ships
and houses, iron mining and smelting, coal mining,
grading railroads and plank roads, in the man-
ufacture of cotton, tobacco, &e., we would find
a vent in new employments for their increase,
more humane and more profitable than the vent
afforded by new states and territories. The nice
and finishing processes of manufactures and me-
chanics should be reserved for the whites, who
only are fitted for them, and thus, by diversifying
pursuits and cutting off dependence on the North,
we might benefit and advance the interests of our
whole population. Exclusive agriculture has de-
pressed and impoverished the South. We will not
here dilate on this topic, because we intend to"
make it the subject of a separate essay. Free
trade doctrines, not slavery, have made the South
agricultural and dependent, given her a sparse and
ignorant population, ruined her cities, and expelled
her people.

88 NEGRO SLAVERY.

"Would the abolitionists approve of a system of
society that set white children free, and remitted
them at the age of fourteen, males and females,
to all the rights, both as to person and property,
which belong to adults ? Would it be criminal or
praiseworthy to do so ? Criminal, of course. Now,
are the average of negroes equal in information, in
native intelligence, in prudenee or providence, to
well-informed white children of fourteen? We who
have lived with them for forty years, think not.
The competition of the world would be too much
for the children. They would be cheated out of
their property and debased in their morals. Yet
they would meet every where with sympathizing
friends of their own color, ready to aid, advise
and assist them. The negro would be exposed
to the same competition and greater temptations,
with no greater ability to contend with them, with
these additional difficulties. He would be welcome
nowhere; meet with. thousands of enemies and no
friends. If he went North, the white laborers
would kick him and cuff him, and drive him out of
employment. If he went to Africa, the savages
"would cook him and eat him. If he went to the
West Indies, they would not let him in, or if they
did, they would soon make of him a savage and
idolater.

We have a further question to ask. If it be
right and incumbent to subject children to the

NEGRO SLAVERY. 89

authority of parents and guardians, and idiots and
lunatics to committees, would it not be equally
right and incumbent to give the free negroes mas-
ters, until at least they arrive at years of discre-
tion, which very few ever did or will attain ? What
is the difference between the authority of a parent
and of a master ? Neither pay wages, and each
is entitled to the services of those subject to him.
The father may not sell his child forever, but may
hire him out till he is twenty-one. The free ne-
gro's master may also be restrained from selling.
Let him stand in loco parentis, and call him papa
instead of master. Look closely into slavery, and
you will see nothing so hideous in it ; or if }-ou
-do, you will find plenty of it at home in its most
hideous form.

The earliest civilization of which history gives
account is that of Egypt. The negro was always
in contact with that civilization. For four thou-
sand years he has had opportunities of becoming
civilized. Like the wild horse, he must be caught,
tamed and domesticated. When his subjugation
ceases he again runs wild, like the cattle on the
Pampas of the South, or the horses on the prairies
of the West. His condition in the West Indies
proves this.

It is a common remark, that the grand and last-
ing architectural structures of antiquity were the
results of slavery. The mighty and continued as-

90 NEGRO SLAVERY.

sociation of labor requisite to their construction,
when mechanic art was so little advanced, and
labor-saving processes unknown, could only have
been brought about by a despotic authority, like
that of the master over his slaves. It is, however,
very remarkable, that whilst in taste and artistic
skill the world seems to have been retrograding
ever since the decay and abolition of feudalism, in
mechanical invention and in great utilitarian ope-
rations requiring the wielding of immense capital
and much labor, its progress has been unexampled.
Is it because capital is more despotic in its au-
thority over free laborers than Roman masters and
feudal lords were over their slaves and vassals ?

Free society has continued long enough to jus-
tify the attempt to generalize its phenomena, and
calculate its moral and intellectual influences. It
is obvious that, in whatever is purely utilitarian
and material, it incites invention and stimulates
industry. Benjamin Franklin, as a man and a
philosopher, is the best exponent of the working
of the system. His sentiments and his philosophy
are low, selfish, atheistic and material. They tend
directly to make man a mere "featherless biped,"
well-fed, well-clothed and comfortable, but regard-
less of his soul as "the beasts that perish."

Since the Reformation the world has as regu-
larly been retrograding in whatever belongs to the
departments of genius, taste and art, as it has

NEGRO SLAVERY. 91

been progressing in physical science and its appli-
cation to mechanical construction. Mediaeval Italy
rivalled if it did not surpass ancient Koine, in
poetry, in sculpture, in painting, and many of the
fine arts. Gothic architecture reared its monu-
ments of skill and genius throughout Europe, till
the loth century ; but Gothic architecture died
with the Reformation. The age of Elizabeth was
the Augustan ao*e of England. The men who

o o c

lived then acquired their sentiments in a world not
yet deadened and vulgarized by puritanical cant
and levelling dcmagoguism. Since then men have
arisen who have been the fashion and the go for a
season, but none have appeared whose names will
descend to posterity. Liberty and equality made
slower advances in France. The age of Louis
XIY. was the culminating point of French genius
and art. It then shed but a flickering and lurid
light. Frenchmen are servile copyists of Roman
art, and Rome had no art of her own. She bor-
rowed from Greece; distorted and deteriorated
what she borrowed; and France imitates and falls
below Roman distortions. The genius of Spain
disappeared with Cervantes ; and now the world
seems to regard nothing as desirable except what
will make money and what costs money. There
is not a poet, an orator, a sculptor, or painter in
the world. The tedious elaboration necessary to
all the productions of high art would be ridiculed

92 NEGRO SLAVERY.

in this money-making, utilitarian, charlatan age.
Nothing now but what is gaudy and costly excites
admiration. The public taste is debased. .

But far the worst feature of modern civilization,
which is the civilization of free society, remains to
be exposed. Whilst labor-saving processes have
probably lessened by one half, in the last century,
the amount of work needed for comfortable sup-
port, the free laborer is compelled by capital and
competition to work more than he ever did before,
and is less comfortable. The organization of so-
ciety cheats him of his earnings, and those earn-
ings go to swell the vulgar pomp and pageantry
of the ignorant millionaires, who are the only
great of the present day. These reflections might
seem, at first view, to have little connexion with
negro slavery ; but it is well for us of the South
not to be deceived by the tinsel glare and glitter
of free society, and to employ ourselves in doing
our duty at home, and studying the past, rather
than in insidious rivalry of the expensive pleasures
and pursuits of men whose sentiments and whose
aims are low, sensual and grovelling.

Human progress, consisting in moral and intel-
lectual improvement, and there being no agreed
and conventional standard weights or measures of
moral and intellectual qualities and quantities, the
question of progress can never be accurately de-
cided. We maintain that man has not improved,

XEGRO SLAVERY. 9 .'"

because in all save the mechanic arts he reverts to
the distant past for models to imitate, and he
never imitates what he can excel.

We need never have white slaves in the South, he-
cause we have black ones. Our citizens, like those
of Home and Athens, are a privileged class. "We
should train and educate them to deserve the privi-
leges and to perform the duties which society con-
fers on them. Instead, by a low demagoguism de-
pressing their self-respect by discourses on the
equality of man, we had better excite their pride by
reminding them that they do not fulfil the menial
offices which white men do in other countries. So-
ciety does not feel the burden of providing for the
few helpless paupers in the South. And we should
recollect that here we have but half the people to
educate, for half are negroes ; whilst at the North
they profess to educate all. It is in our power to
spike this last gun of the abolitionists. We should
educate all the poor. The abolitionists say that it
is one of the necessary consequences of slavery
that the poor are neglected. It was not so in
Athens, and in Rome, and should not be so in the
South. If we had less trade with and less de-
pendence on the North, all our poor might be pro-
fitably and honorably employed in trades, profes-
sions and manufactures. Then we should have a
rich and denser population. Yet we but marshal
her in the way that she was going. The South is

94 NEGRO SLAVERY.

already aware of the necessity of a new policy,
and has begun to act on it. Every clay more and
more is done for education, the mechanic arts,
manufactures and internal improvements. We will
soon be independent of the North.

We deem this peculiar question of negro slavery
of very little importance. The issue is made
throughout the world on the general subject of
slavery in the abstract. The argument has com-
menced. One set of ideas will govern and control
after awhile the civilized world. Slavery will every
where be abolished, or every where be re-instituted.
We think the opponents of practical, existing
slavery, are estopped by their own admission ;
nay, that unconsciously, as socialists, they are the
defenders and propagandists of slavery, and have
furnished the only sound arguments on which its
defence and justification can be rested. We have
introduced the subject of negro slavery to afford
us a better opportunity to disclaim the purpose of
reducing the white man any where to the condition
of negro slaves here. It would be very unwise
and unscientific to govern white men as you would
negroes. Every shade and variety of slavery has
existed in the world. In some cases there has
been much of legal regulation, much restraint of
the master's authority ; in others, none at all.
The character of slavery necessary to protect the
whites in Europe should be much milder than

XEGRO SLAVERY. 95

negro slavery, for slavery is only needed to pro-
tect the white man, whilst it is more necessary for
the government of the negro even than for his
protection. But even negro slavery should not be
outlawed. We might and should have laws in
Virginia, as in Louisiana, to make the master sub-
ject to presentment by the grand jury and to pun-
ishment, for any inhuman or improper treatment
or neglect of his slave.

We abhor the doctrine of the "Types of Man-
kind ;" first, because it is at war with scripture,,
which teaches us that the whole human race is
descended from a common parentage; and, se-
condly, because it encourages and incites brutal
masters to treat negroes, not as weak, ignorant
and dependent brethren, but as wicked beasts,
without the pale of humanity. The Southerner is
the negro's friend, his only friend. Let no inter-
meddling abolitionist, no refined philosophy, dis-
solve this friendship.

CHAPTER VI.

SCRIPTURAL AUTHORITY FOR SLAVERY.

We find slavery repeatedly instituted by God,
or by men acting under his immediate care and
direction, as in the instances of Moses and Joshua.
Nowhere in the Old or New Testament do we find
the institution condemned, but frequently recog-
nized and enforced. In individual instances slavery
may be treated as an evil, and no doubt it is often
a very great one where its subject is fitted to take
care of himself and would be happier and more
useful as a freeman than as a slave. It was often
imposed as a punishment for sin, but this affords
no argument against its usefulness or its necessity.
It is probably no cause of regret that men are so
constituted as to require that many should be
slaves. Slavery opens many sources of happiness
and occasions and encourages the exercise of many
virtues and affections which would be unknown
without it. It begets friendly, kind and affection-
ate relations, just as equality engenders antago-
nism and hostility on all sides. The condition of
slavery in all ages and in all countries has been
considered in the general disgraceful, but so to
some extent have hundreds of the necessary trades

SCRIPTURAL AUTHORITY FOR SLAVE HI*. 97

and occupations of freemen. The necessity which
often compels the best of men to resort to such
trades and occupations in no degree degrades their
character, nor does the necessity which imposes
slavery degrade the character of the slave. The
man who acts well his part, whether as slave or
free laborer, is entitled to and commands the es-
teem and respect of all good men. The disgrace
of slavery all consists in the cowardice, the im-
providence or crime which generally originate it.
The Babylonian captivity and slavery were in-
tended to chastise, purify and elevate the Jews,
not to degrade them. The disgrace consisted in
the crimes, the effeminacy and the idolatry which
invited and occasioned that captivity.

If the scriptural authority for slavery were rob-
bed of its divine authorship, still it would stand
far above all human authority. Moses, if an im-
postor, was the wisest statesman that ever lived.
Under his stereotyped and unchangeable institu-
tions, Judea, a small and barren country, went on
to prosper, until in the age of Solomon, the Jews
became the wealthiest and most enlightened people
on earth. More than a thousand years afterwards,
in the reign of Vespasian, the single city of
Jerusalem defied for six months the combined
power of the civilized world, led on by the best
warrior and greatest genius of the age.

Such vitality did those institutions of Moses
E

98 SCRIPTURAL AUTHORITY FOR SLAVERY.

possess, that although the Jews were scattered in
after times to the four winds of heaven, down trod-
den, hated, persecuted, oppressed, still clinging to
the very letter of his law, they are to day a great,
numerous and prosperous people. Whilst the lower
classes among them are shrewd, cunning, filthy
and dishonest, the upper classes are honest, high-
minded, enlightened and immensely wealthy. To-
day, the Rothschilds wield as much power as the
Emperor Nicholas, and wield it more wisely and
humanely. Of their institutions slavery was an
important element. If their unparalleled wisdom
and success prove not their divine origin, this at
least proves that they are infinitely the best models
of human polity.

Ham, a son of Noah, was condemned to slavery
and his posterity* after him. We do not adopt the
theory that he was the ancestor of the negro race.
The Jewish slaves were not negroes, and to con-
fine the justification of slavery to that race would
be to weaken its scriptural authority, and to lose
the whole weight of profane authority, for we read
of no negro slavery in ancient times.

The righteous Abraham, the chosen of God from
a wicked world, was both prince and master. He
possessed the power of life and death over his
subjects or slaves, and over his wife and children.
When about to sacrifice Isaac, he never dreamed
that any human authority could dispute his right

SCRIPTURAL AUTHORITY TOR SLAVERY. 99

or stay his hand. Yet who would not prefer to
have been of the household of Abraham, to delving
as a free laborer for some vulgar boss of modern
times. In the times of Abraham, we may infer
from his history that all masters possessed the
power of life and death. It teaches us another
lesson, — how much there is in a name. We attach
nothing humiliating or disgraceful to the situation
of the subject of a despotic prince; but call him
master, " there all the dishonor lies." In truth,
the influences on character are the same, provided
the persons subjected be the same.

The first runaway we read of was Hagar, and
she we find, like runaways at the North, about
to perish for want. An angel of the Lord did
not spurn the office which Senator Sumner con-
temns — to restore the fugitive to her owners.
"And the Angel of the Lord said unto her, re-
turn to thy mistress and submit thyself under
her hands." St. Paul, the Chevalier Bayard of
Christianity, had not so nice a sense of honor as
the Massachusetts Senator. He returned Onesi-
mus to his master. Christianity then inculcated
and enjoined obedience to masters. Pretended
Christianity, now, incites disobedience and insur-
rection, and heads mobs to rescue slaves from
their masters.

In Judea men might become slaves, as captives
taken in war; probably a majority of slaves were

lOO SCftiiDURAL AUTHORITY FOR SLAVERY.

of this character. It has been, on insufficient
grounds we think, assumed, that slavery owes its
origin generally to this source.

It is true that ancient peoples made slaves of
the vanquished, hut it is also true, that in all in-
stances we find slavery pre-existing in both the
conquering and conquered nation. The word " ser-
vus" is said to derive its origin from the fact that
prisoners of war who were made slaves, were
saved or preserved from death thereby ; their lives
being, according to the Law of Nations as then
understood, forfeited to the victor. The Chinese
every day sell themselves to each other to "save
or preserve" themselves from want, hunger and
death. Such ' instances no doubt were of daily oc-
currence in all ancient societies, and the word "ser-
vus" may have as well originated from this social
practice as from the practices of war. We do not
think history will sustain the theory that even in
case of war, it was the mere saving the life, that
originated the term. Conquerors in feudal times,
we know, and probably in all times, parcelled out
the conquered territory, both the lands and the
people, to inferior chieftains, whose interest and
duty it became to preserve lands, fruits, crops,
houses, and inhabitants, from the cruel rapine,
waste, pillage and oppression of the common sol-
diers. It is the interest of victors not to destroy
what they have vanquished, and history shows

SCRIPTURAL AUTHORITY FOR SLAVERY. 101

that their usages have conformed to their interests.
We deem this definition of the origin of slavery
by war more consistent with history and humanity,
than the usual one, that the mere life of the pri-
soner was saved, and hence he was called "servus."

Men might sell themselves in Judea, and they
could be sold for debt or crime. The slavery of
the Jews was but temporary, that of the heathen
to the Jews hereditary. We cannot conclude the
scriptural view of slavery better than by the cita-
tion of authorities collected and collated from the
Old and New Testaments by Professor Stuart of
Andover, in a pamphlet entitled, " Conscience and
the Constitution."

Exodus xxi: 2. If thou buy a Hebrew servant,
six years he shall serve, and he the seventh shall
go out free for nothing. (3.) If he came in by
himself, he shall go out by himself; if he were
married, then his wife shall go out with him.
(4.) If his master have given him a wife, and she
have borne him sons or daughters, the wife and
her children shall be her master's, and he shall go
out by himself. (7.) And if a man sell his daugh-
ter to be a maid servant, she shall not go out as
the men servants do. (8.) If she please not her
master, who hath betrothed her to himself, then
shall he let her be redeemed : to sell her unto a
strange nation, he shall have no power, seeing he
hath dealt deceitfully with her. (9.) And if he

102 SCRIPTURAL AUTHORITY TOR SLAVERY.

have betrothed her unto his son, he shall deal with
her after the manner of daughters. (10.) If he
take hirn another wife, her food, her raiment, and
her duty of marriage, shall he not diminish. (11.)
And if he do not these three unto her, then shall
she go out free without money. (20.) And if a
man smite his servant or his maid, with a rod, and
he die under his hand, he shall be surely punished.
(21.) Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two,
he shall not be punished : for he is his money.
(26.) And if a man smite the eye of his servant
or maid, that it perish, he shall let him go free
for his eye's sake. (27.) And if he smite out his
man servant's tooth or his maid servant's tooth ;
he shall let him go free for the tooth's sake.

Leviticus xxv : 44. Both thy bondmen and thy
bondmaids which thou shalt have, shall be of the
heathen that are around about you ; of them
shall you buy bondmen and bondmaids. (45.)
Moreover, of the children of the strangers that
do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy,
and of their families that are with you, which
they begat in your land ; and they shall be your
possession. (46.) And ye shall take them as an
inheritance for your children after you, to inherit
them for a possession ; they shall be your bond-
men forever.

Neiv Testament Authorities. — Paul to the Ephe-
sians vi : 5 — 9. Servants, be obedient to them

SCRIPTURAL AUTHORITY FOR SLAVERY. 103

that are your masters according to the flesh, with
fear and trembling, with singleness of heart, as
unto Christ ; (6.) Not with eye service as men-
pleasers; but as the servants of Christ doing the
will of God from the heart. (7.) With good will
doing service as to the Lord, and not to men ;
(8.) Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man
doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord,
whether he be bond or free. (9.) And ye mas-
ters, do the same thing unto them, forbearing
threatening, knowing that your Master also is in
heaven ; neither is there respect of persons with
him.

Paul, Colossians iii: 22. Servants obey in all
things your masters according to the flesh ; not
with eye service as men-pleasers ; but in single-
ness of heart fearing God. (23.) And whatsoever
ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord and not unto
man ; knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive
the reward of the inheritance : for ye serve the
Lord Christ. (25.) But he that doeth wrong, shall
receive for the wrong which he hath done : and
there is no respect of persons, (iv: 1.) Masters
give unto your servants that which is just and
equal, knowing that you also have a Master in
heaven.

Titus ii : 9. Exhort servants to be obedient unto
their own masters, and to please them well in all
things ; not answering again ; (10.) Not purloin-

104 SCRIPTURAL AUTHORITY FOR SLAVERY.

ing, but showing all good fidelity ; that they may
adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things.
1 Peter ii: 18. Servants be subject to your mas-
ters with all fear ; not only to the good and gen-
tle, but also to the froward. (19.) For this is
thank-worthy, if a man for conscience toward God
endure grief, suffering wrongfully. For what glory
is it, if when ye be buffetted for your faults, ye
shall take it patiently ? but if when ye do well
and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is ac-
ceptable with God. (21.) For even hereunto were
ye called : because Christ also suffered for us,
leaving us an example that ye should follow his
steps.

CHAPTER VII.

DOMESTIC AFFECTIOX.

Historians and philosophers, speculating upon
the origin of governments, have generally agreed
that the family was its first development. It has
ever been, and will ever be, its most common form.
Two-thirds of mankind, the women and children,
are everywhere the subjects of family govern-
ment. In all countries where slavery exists, the
slaves also are the subjects of this kind of gov-
ernment. Now slaves, wives and children have
no other government ; they do not come directly
in contact with the institutions and rulers of the
State. But the family government, from its na-
ture, has ever been despotic. The relations be-
tween the parent or master and his family sub-
jects are too various, minute and delicate, to be
arranged, defined, and enforced by law. God has
in his mercy and wisdom provided a better check,
to temper and direct the power of the master of
the family, than any human government has de-
vised. He who takes note of every sparrow that
falls, who will not break the bruised reed, and
who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, has not
been forgetful or regardless of wives, children,
and slaves. He has extended the broad panoply

106 DOMESTIC AFFECTION.

of domestic affection over them all, that the winds
of heaven may not visit them too roughly ; under
its expansive folds other of his creatures repose
in quiet and security: the ox, the horse, the sheep,
the faithful dog, hetake themselves to its friendly
shelter, and cluster around their protecting mas-
ter.

Domestic affection cannot be calculated in dol-
lars and cents. It cannot be weighed, or meas-
ured, or seen, or felt — except in its effects. " The
wind bloweth where it listeth and no man knoweth
whence it cometh or whither it goeth." Its holy
fountain is concealed in deeper recesses than the
head of the Nile, and in its course it dispenses
blessings from the rich overflowings of the heart,
ten thousand times more precious than that sacred
river ever gave to the land of Egypt. Political
economists, politicians and materialists ignore its
existence, because it is too refined for their com-
prehension. The material world engrosses their
attention, and they heed little those moral
agencies that Providence has established to con-
trol the material world. Slavery without domes-
tic affection would be a curse, and so would mar-
riage and parental authority. The free laborer
is excluded from its holy and charmed circle.
Shelterless, naked, and hungry, he is exposed to
the bleak winds, the cold rains, and hot sun of
heaven, with none that love him, none that care

DOMESTIC AFFECTION. 107

for him. His employer hates him because he
asks high wages or joins strikes ; his fellow la-
borer hates him because he competes with him for
employment. Foolish Abolitionists ! bring him
back like the Prodigal Son. Let him fare at
least as well as the clog, and the horse, and the
sheep. Abraham's tent is ready to receive him.
Better lie clown with the kids and the goats, than
stand naked and hungry without. As a slave, he
will be beloved and protected. Whilst free, he
will be hated, despised and persecuted. Such is
the will of God and order of Providence. It is
idle to enquire the reasons.

Soldiers and sailors are, and ever must be, also,
the subjects of despotic rule. They have sold
their liberty. They have sold their persons and
their lives. No domestic affection mitigates and
qualifies their slavery ! Those who rule them,
love them not, for they belong not to their family
and household. It is well that they are men in
the prime of life, who can bear hard and harsh
treatment ; for hard and harsh treatment they are
sure to get. Whipping is prohibited in the army
and navy ! Miserable ignorance and charlatan-
ism ! You cannot prohibit whipping until you
disband both army and navy. What is whip-
ping ? Is it not corporeal punishment ? and is
not corporeal detention and corporeal punishment
part of the sailor's and soldier's contract. If he

108 DOMESTIC AFFECTION.

wishes to desert, may you not and will you not
restrain him by bodily force ? Will you not, if
necessary, knock him down, hand-cuff, and im-
prison him ? Nay, if he repeat the offence, will
you not shoot him ? Will you not fasten a chain
and a block to him if necessary ? Whipping has
not been abolished, and cannot be abolished in
navy or army. Whipping means — corporeal pun-
ishment, and corporeal detention. You retain the
right to inflict them, and it is a mere matter of
caprice and taste how they shall be inflicted. The
man whose person is sold is a slave. The man
whose person is imprisoned for punishment has
felt the disgrace of whipping and endured more
than its pains.

CHAPTER VIII.

RELIGION.

Our ancestors of the Revolution adopted the
doctrine of free competition, demand and supply,
and Laissez-faire in religion, as in almost every-
thing else. The '•world was too much governed,"
and religion seemed to them, one of the most odi-
ous forms of government. The fires of Smithfield,
the Gun-powder plot, and the Vespers of St. Bar-
tholomew were fresh in men's memories.

The Churches and lands of the Episcopal Church
were confiscated. And an even-handed justice re-
solved that there should be no more churches,
church lands, nor even burying places for the poor.
Land could not be held for such purposes. They
professed to allow every one to choose his own
religion, but refused them a place wherein to
make the selection, and to worship God after the
selection should be made. No government had
ever existed without a recognised state religion.
To dispense with an institution so universal and
so natural, was a bold experiment. Fortunately
for us, Christianity did slip into our governments
despite the intention of their framers. It was
so interwoven with all our customs, feelings, pre-
judices and lives, that to the surprise and mortifi-

110 RELIGION.

cation of many, Christianity, though maimed, crip-
pled and disabled, still Christianity was discov-
ered amongst our own institutions ; and probably
lias continued to this day the most potent and
influential part of our systems.

Despite the Constitution of the United States,
which secures to all the free exercise of religious
freedom, there is scarcely a State in this Union
that would permit, under the pretext of religious
forms and observances, any gross violations of
christian morality.

Mormons and Oneida Perfectionists would no
sooner be tolerated in Virginia than Pyrrhic Dances
and human sacrifices to Moloch. Even Catholics
would not be permitted to enact a Parisian sab-
bath, or Venitian carnival. Christianity is the
established religion of most of our States, and
Christianity conforming itself to the moral feelings
and prejudices of the great majority of the peo-
ple. No gross violation of public decency will be
allowed for the sake of false abstractions.

Women may wear paddies or bloomers, but if
they carry the spirit of independence so far as
to adopt a dress to conceal their sex, they will
soon find themselves in a cage or a prison.

We wished to try the experiment of government
without religion, we failed in the attempt. The
French did try it, and enthroned the goddess of
Reason hard by the reeking guillotine. Moloch
might have envied the Goddess the number of her

RELIGION. Ill

victims, for the streets of Paris ran with blood.
The insane ravings of the drunken votaries of Bac-
chus, were innocency and decency personified, when
compared with the mad profanity of Frenchmen,
cut loose from religion, and from God.

Soon, very soon, even French republicans dis-
covered the necessity of religion to the very exis-
tence of society and of government, and with a pro-
fanity more horrible than that which installed the
goddess of Reason, they resolved to legislate into
existence a Supreme Being. On this occasion, the
cruel Robespierre pays one of the most beautiful
and just tributes to religion we have ever read.
"We quote it as a continuation of our argument
and an elucidation of our theory — " That religion
is a necessary governmental institution."

"Let us here take a lesson from history. Take
notice, I beseech you, how T the men who have ex-
ercised an influence on the destinies of States
have been led into one or the other of the two oppo-
site systems, by their personal character, and by
the very nature of their political views. Observe
with what profound art Caesar pleading in the
Roman Senate, * in behalf of the accomplices of
Cataline, deviates into a digression against the
dogma of the immortality of the human soul, so
well calculated do those ideas appear to him, to
extinguish in the hearts of the judges the energy
of virtue, so intimately does the cause of crime

112 RELIGION.

seem to be connected with that of infidelity. —
Cicero, on the contrary, invoked the sword of the
law and the thunderbolts of the gods against the
traitors. Leonidas, at Thermopylae, supping with
his companions in arms, the moment before exe-
cuting the most heroic design that human vir-
tue ever conceived, invited them for the next day
to another banquet in a new life. Cato did not
hesitate between Epicurus and Zeno. Brutus and
the illustrious conspirators who shared his dan-
ger and his glory, belonged also to that sublime
sect of the Stoics, which had such lofty ideas of the
dignity of man, which carried the enthusiasm of
virtue to such a height, and which was extravagant
in heroism only. Stoicism saved the honor of
human nature, degraded by the vices of the suc-
cessors of Caesar, and still more by the patience
of the people."

In the same speech, speaking of the philoso-
phers, he identifies atheism and materialism with
the then and now prevalent doctrines of Politi-
cal Economy. — " This sect propagated with great
zeal the opinion of materialism, which prevailed
among the great and among the Beaux Esprits ;
to it we owe in part that kind of practical philo-
sophy, which, reducing selfishness to a system,
considers human society as a warfare of trickery,
success as the rule of right and wrong, integrity
as a matter of taste or decorum, the world as
the patrimony of clever scoundrels."

RELIGION. 113

We are gradually dismissing our political pre-
judice against religion. The Legislature of Vir-
ginia, some years ago, passed a law to permit re-
ligious congregations to hold land to erect churches
on, and at its last session a law was enacted
chartering some religious institution. The ob-
servance of the Christian sabbath is enforced by
law. Ministers of the gospel are recognised as
such, incapacitated to hold civil offices and ex-
empted from many civil duties. Oaths are admin-
istered on the Bible, and infidels, it is the better
opinion, are incompetent witnesses. Marriage in
the South is generally a Christian ordinance as
well as a civil contract, to be celebrated only by
ministers of the Gospel. At the North marriage
is a mere bargain, like the purchase of a horse,
with the difference, that the wife cannot be swap-
ped off — hence, when they get tired of her, they
knock her on the head.

We are not surprised that frequent wife-murder
should result from their low, sordid, worldly view
of the marriage tie, and still less surprised, that
with these, and a hundred other ill consequences
arising from their sort of marriages, that women's
conventions should be held to assert her rights
to liberty? independence and breeches, and that
sympathising bachelors in the ranks of the Social-
ists, propose to dispense with this troublesome and
inconvenient relation altogether. In the Norch

114 RELIGION.

there is a tendency to anarchy and infidelity, in
the South to conservatism and stricter religious ob-
servation. We should be cautious, prudent and
experimental in giving governmental aid to reli-
gion. Like fire, if it escapes from our control,
it will become dangerous and destructive, — but it
is nevertheless like fire, indispensable. A repub-
lic cannot continue without the prevalence of sound
morality. Laws are useless and inefficient without
moral men to expound and administer them.

We have not a solitary example in all history
to countenance the theories of our ancestors, that
a people may be moral, or that a government can
exist where religion is not in some form or de-
gree recognised by law. What latitude shall be
allowed to men in the exercise and practice of reli
gion, is a question for the people to determine
when the occasion requires it. It is best not to
lay down abstract principles to guide us in advance.
Of all the applications of philosophy none have
failed so signally as when it has been tried in
matters of government. Philosophy will blow up
any government that is founded on it. Religion,
on the other hand, will sustain the governments
that rest upon it. The French build governments
on a. priori doctrines of philosophy which explode
as fast as built. The English gradually and experi-
mentally form institutions, watch their operation,
and deduce general laws from those operations.

RELIGIOX. 115

That kind of philosophy, which neither attempts
to create nor account for, is admissible and useful.
An extensive knowledge of the history of the
various moral philosophies that have succeeded
each other in the vrorld, is useful, but only useful
because it warns us to avoid all philosophy in the
practical affairs of life. If we would have our
people moral, and our institutions permanent, we
should gradually repudiate our political abstrac-
tions and adopt religious truths in their stead.

It is an unpoplar theme to deny human pro-
gress and human improvement. We flatter our-
selves that we are more enlightened as well as
more moral than the ancients, yet we imitate
them in all else save the mechanic arts. Our
hearts, we think, are not as hard and callous as
theirs, for they delighted in gladiatorial combats
which would fill us with horror. But we are as
much pleased to hear of victories won by our
countrymen as they, and our pleasure mounts the
higher as we hear of more of the enemy killed in
battle. Our nerves are too delicate to witness
the pangs of the dying, but we rejoice to hear
they are dead. Now, our moral code is one of
the purest selfishness. The ancients were divided
between Stoicism and Epicurism, — the philosophy
of the Sadducees and that of the Pharisees.
Neither the Epicurean, nor the Sadducee profes-
sed as low, selfish and grovelling a morality as

116 RELIGION.

that which our prevalent political economy incul-
cates. The Stoics and the Pharisees soared far above
it. Divest us of our Christian morality, and leave
us to our moral philosophy, and we might dread
the comparison with any era of the past. We
have but one moral code, and that the selfish one ;
the ancients always had two, one of which was
elevated, self-denying and unselfish. In truth, a
material and infidel philosophy has prevailed for
a century, and seemed to threaten the overthrow
of Christianity. But man is a religious animal.
His mind may become distempered and diseased
for a time, and he may cavil and doubt as to
Deity, immortality and accountability — but " con-
science that makes cowards of us all," soon forces
upon him the conviction that he is living in the
presence of a God. The belief in God and moral
accountability, like the belief in self-existence and
free agency, is necessitous and involuntary. It
is part of our consciousness. We cannot prove
that we exist; we cannot prove that we are free
agents. We must take our consciousness and
involuntary belief, as proof that we do exist and
are free agents. This is the conclusion at which
metaphysicians have arrived. Now explore all the
secrets of human hearts, all the recesses of his-
tory, and it will be found that religion is as much
a matter of consciousness and involuntary belief
as free agency or self-existence. It is a stubborn

RELIGION. 117

fact in human nature. Statesmen cannot ignore
its existence, and must provide for its exercise and
enjoyment, else their institutions will vanish like
chaff before the wind.

CHAPTER IX.

THE BALANCE OF TRADE.

Political economists maintain that a nation gains
nothing by selling more than it buys. That the
balance of trade is a humbug ; nay more, that the
way for a nation to get rich is to buy more than
it sells. Thus more will come in than goes out.
Instinct and common sense deny the proposition.
They say, that the way for individuals or people
to get rich is to sell more than they buy. Philo-
sophy beats them all hollow in argument, yet in-
stinct and common sense are right and philoso-
phy wrong. Philosophy is always wrong and in-
stinct and common sense always right, because
philosophy is unobservant and reasons from nar-
row and insufficient premises, whilst common sense
sees and observes all things, giving them their due
weight, comes to just conclusions, but being
busied about practical every day matters, has
never learned the process of abstraction, has
never learned how to look into the operations of
its mind and see how it has come to its conclu-
sions. It always judges rightly, but reasons
wrong. It comes to its conclusions by the same
processes of ratiocination that abstract philoso-
phers do, but unaccustomed and untrained to look

THE BALANCE OF TRADE. 119

into its own mental operations, it knows not how
it arrived at those conclusions. It sees all the
facts and concludes rightly, — abstract philosophers
see but a few, reason correctly on them, but err
in judgment because their premises are partial and
incorrect. Men of sound judgments, are always
men who give wrong reasons for their opinions.
They form correct opinions because they are
practical and experienced ; they give wrong rea-
sons for those opinions, because they are no ab-
stractionists and cannot detect, follow and ex-
plain the operations of their own minds. The
judgment of women is far superior to that of
men. They are more calm and observant. Every
mirried man knows that when he places a scheme
before his wife and she disapproves it, he con-
quers her in argument, goes away distrusting his
own opinion, though triumphant, and finds in the
end his wife was right, though she could not tell
why. Women have more sense than men, but
they want courage to carry out and execute what
their judgments commend. Hence men, although
they fail in a thousand visionary schemes, succeed
at last in some one, and are dubbed the nobler
sex. An old bachelor friend of ours, says : women
are great at a quarrel, bad at argument.

This is deviating a little from the balance of
trade, but we return to it. All political econo-
mists contend that the local increase of currency

120 THE BALANCE OF TRADE.

increases prices, and Say goes so far as to say that
doubling the money in France, would double prices
in France. Rich men do not give double as high
prices as poor men, but buy cheaper, although
they have more money. Money is cheap and
abundant in London, and prices are not half what
they are in new countries, which are flourishing,
and where money is scarce. Double the amount
of money in the world, and you double prices.
Double its amount in any one country, and in
many instances you would diminish prices. —
Wheat and corn, and negroes, and manufactured
articles, would sell no higher in Virginia, if her
currency were quadrupled, for she would have her
prices determined for those articles, by the mar-
kets of the world. Lands fitted for mere grain
producing would sell no higher, for their value
would be determined by the amount of money
their crops would fetch in foreign markets, and
be not at all affected by the amount of money in
Virginia, for Virginia makes more grain than she
can consume, and foreign markets regulate its
price. City lots and houses would rise in value,
but even in them the prices would be somewhat
regulated by the prices of the world, for men will
sooner quit their country than give inordinate
prices for houses to live in. We never could ac-
count for the common error and folly of political
economists, in supposing that a local increase of

121 THE BALANCE 01 TllADE. ■

currency, would be followed by a corresponding
increase of prices* If it were true, then the bal-
ance of trade would be of no advantage, but it
is foolishly false.

The balance of trade, the accumulation and
increase of money, having no determinate in-
fluence on prices, in many cases diminishing them,
in a few increasing them, what is to become of
the accession to the currency, for which the bu-
siness of the community has no use or demand ?
Men will not let their money lie idle. It cannot
be employed by themselves, or by those who bor-
row it, in existing pursuits. They are all filled
up. The consequence is, that new pursuits arise.
An agricultural country becomes a commercial
and manufacturing one, and thus four or five
times the money is required for its transactions.
Ships and factories are built, and thousands of
laborers and artisans are introduced for the
purpose. Then it becomes necessary to build
houses, to construct roads, and to make canals.
Now there is use for the increase of money, oc-
casioned by the favorable balance of trade ;
and as one dollar in currency represents some
twenty in property, every dollar imported in
excess over dollars exported, will occasion an
increase of local and national wealth of twenty
dollars. The man who saves a thousand dollars
of his income is only a thousand dollars richer,

F

THE BALANCE OE TRADE. 122

but the nation that saves a thousand dollars adds
twenty thousand to its wealth. We are no
cosmopolite philanthropists, and will not stop to
enquire the effects on the wealth of the world,
but we undertake to say, that the local advan-
tages of the balance of trade have been grossly
underrated by its warmest advocates. Political
economists have ever been the astutest, but most
narrow-minded and least comprehensive of men.
Whilst on this subject we will remark, that so
far as we have examined their works, they con-
found the simplest rules of logic. They treat of
political economy as a mere physical science, of
man as a mere machine, impelled by mechanical
forces, and determine the results of all national
policy and industrial avocations by measurements
of time, distance, cost of transportation, ca-
pacity of soil, climate, &c. Now the effect of
an exclusive policy on a people highly intellectual,
having many wants, moral, mental and physical,
in a Northern clime, with a sterile soil, is to stimu-
late that people to the exertion of mind and body,
and to make them produce in a small compass all
that human skill, industry and ingenuity can
procure. In such a country, as in the little re-
publics of Greece, under an exclusive policy,
the wisdom of a world must concentrate, else
their wants, moral, physical and intellectual, will
be unsupplied. On the other hand, a people who

123 THE BALANCE OF TRADE.

are supplied by commerce "with all that their
natures require arc lured and enticed to be-
take themselves to some simple operation, such as
agriculture, and thus become poor, half-civilized
and ignorant. We appeal to history to attest the
universal truth of our theory. Trade never did
civilize a people ; never failed to degrade them,
unless they supplied the manufactured articles.
On another occasion vre may show how this con-
founding of the moral with the physical, ren-
ders worthless all the speculations of the econo-
mists.

As further proof and illustration of our theory,
as to the balance of trade, we cite the following
examples : — A country continually declining in
wealth, would have each day less use for a cir-
culating medium, and would export a part of it.
On the other hand, a country improving in wealth
and population, must continually increase her
medium of exchange. The balance of trade is,
therefore, always against the declining country,
and in favor of the improving one. It remains
only to show, that this diminution of currency
may be a cause of decline, and its increase a
cause of improvement. The importation of agri-
cultural instruments into a country with a rich
soil, and plenty of inhabitants, but without those
instruments, would increase its wealth a thousand
fold. Now, money is not only necessary to set

THE BALANCE OF TRADE. 124

agriculture in operation, but far more necessary
in all other industrial pursuits. Therefore, the
increase of money, like the increase of tools of
farming, sets men to work in a thousand -ways,
in which they could not engage without such in-
crease. The Negroes, the Indians, the Mexicans
and Lazzaroni of Naples, would not be benefited
by the increase of currency, by bank expansions,
and by a favorable balance of trade, but all peo-
ple who are ripe and prepared for new enter-
prises, will be immensely benefited by such in-
crease and expansion,

CHAPTER X.

BANKS.

Banks have become so important a part of our
institutions, and exercise so controlling an influ-
ence on the wealth and well being of individuals
and of States, that any treatise on social science
Would be imperfect, that omitted to notice them.

Their importance is greatly increased in this
country by the existence almost every "where of
restraining laws, which prohibit and punish pri-
vate banking, or the issue of private paper, pay-
able to bearer. Private credit being, we think,
very properly restricted in this way, it becomes
the duty of the State to supply its place as fairly
and equally as practicable by bank credit, in the
form of bank notes. In Virginia especially, the
note holders have been more than compensated
for the deprivation of this form of private credit,
by the greater security afforded through means
of corporate banks.

Whether the effect of unrestricted free banking
would be permanently to flood the country with
worthless paper, or by re-action and loss of confi-
dence in all such paper, to bring it back to a
specie currency, is a question we will not under-
take to solve. We are inclined to believe a cur-

BANKS. 126

rency solely metallic would be the consequence.
Such a currency is wholly unfitted to the wants
and usages of modern society.

The Virginia system of banking, with mother
banks and branches, has operated well so far as
security to note holders, and integrity of admin-
istration are concerned. We have no doubt the
system, with slight modifications, will be con-
tinued. In a growing and improving State, its
capacity for expansion is one of its greatest re-
commendations. It would be well, within cer-
tain limits, that the Legislature should permit the
present banks, at any time, to increase their capi-
tals, and to establish branches at such points,
and with such capital, as they please — giving
them the further power to wind up such branches
when they pleased. We might thus obtain a cur-
rency capable of expanding and contracting with
the wants and exigencies of trade. ISTow, we have
a fixed and stationary amount of currency, with
a population rapidly increasing in wealth and
numbers. In the last five years the increase of
prices, occasioned by the mines of California and
Australia, and the growth and increase of our
towns, internal improvements, &c., has doubled
the moneyed price of the property of Virginia.
Yet in that five years a very small addition has
been made to our banking capital. Either that
capital was entirely too great five years ago, or

127 BANKS.

it is now much too small, and is cramping indus-
try, energy and enterprise, and preventing growth
and development.

Some political economists contend that the
increase of currency in a country, metallic or
paper, after the existing demands of trade are
satisfied, increases all prices, but does not add
to national wealth. Others restrict and qualify
the proposition, and maintain that such increase
only enhances the prices of immoveable articles,
whose value is not determined by the markets of
the world. Their doctrines are equally false. As
a permanent and normal fact, the prices of lands,
labor and city lots, are no more affected by a re-
dundant currency than those of wheat, cotton
and tobacco. Rich men, with plenty of money,
do not pay more for what they buy than the poor,
but less. In like manner, rich communities and
cities, like New York and London, affording a
better market, pay less for what they buy and
sell cheaper than poorer places. New banks, like
young merchants, have to buy their experience.
They give too much credit, encourage specu-
lation and visionary unprofitable enterprises,
and thus inflate the prices of every thing around
them for a time. Failures occur, re-action takes
place, they become over cautious, and depress
prices as far below the proper standard, as they
had inflated above it. After awhile they learn

BANKS. 128

to conduct business properly, and then prices as-
sume a proper and safe level.

Two years more must transpire before the
Legislature can convene, re-charter the present
banks, or establish a new system, and get that
system, or additional branches of the present
system, into operation. That the State will suf-
fer greatly from this delay we think there can be
little doubt.

A banking system, such as we suggest, would
wield much power, and constitute a most impor-
tant governmental institution. Its influence would
be conservative, and its administration probably
fair, equal and impartial. The number of mother
banks would secure enough of competition, and
their interests would induce them to establish
branches, when and where only they would be
profitable. The stockholders of banks are gen-
erally men of much experience and knowledge in
business, cautious and conservative in their deal-
ings, and opposed to speculations. They are men
living on their incomes, whose fortunes are made,
and who have no temptations to incur risk.
The control of the amount of currency might be
safely left in their hands, for either too great
expansions or contractions would injure them. —
Universal suffrage has given to the progressive
element in society, the poor, the young, and the
enterprising, so much power, that this conserva-
tive balance would not be amiss.

BANKS. 129

The prices of land, and the wages of labor,
are regulated and fixed generally by the prices of
the products of land and labor, and not at all
influenced by the scarcity or abundance of money.

The safe and legitimate influence of expansion,
or increase of currency, by stimulating enterprises
that are profitable, is what no one complains of.
This brings us to consider the doctrine which
we maintained in our chapter on the Balance of
Trade, — That the increase of currency, when it is
merely local or national, will not inflate prices,
but if it gives rise to new pursuits of industry and
new investments of capital which are profitable,
that then each thousand dollars added to the cur-
rency of a country will add at least twenty thou-
sand to its wealth. In this we assume that each
dollar in a community is represented by twenty
dollars of property. Now, no people are ready
for an increase of their currency, until they are
also ready so to increase their population, and
to vary and add to their trade and pursuits,
as to have twenty times as much additional capi-
tal in property as additional currency. In new
countries we see instances every day where the
value of property is added to twenty fold, in a
single year. In an old country the same thing
will oosur, provided accessions to the currency
occasion new and profitable pursuits and enter-

130 BANKS.

prises sufficient permanently to absorb and em-
ploy such accessions.

The banks of this State, if they can profitably
double their issues, can only do so by increasing
existing trade and business, or by originating meas-
ures that will result in an increase of the wealth
of the State twenty fold the increase of their
issues. Every people ought to have among them
as much money as can be profitably employed,
because each additional dollar so employed adds
ere long twenty to State wealth. If a million of
dollars were permanently taken away from the
currency of a country, it must either change its
pursuits and engage in modes of industry requir-
ing less capital in money ; or if it continues its
then existing trade and pursuits, it must lessen
their amount in proportion to the diminution of
the currency. This only could be effected by
diminishing the property of the country twenty
millions — that is, on the assumption that twenty
millions of property require for its proper admin-
istration, sales and transfers, one million of money.
As we have before contended, an increase of a
million in currency, to render that increase per-
manent and profitable, must be followed by a cor-
responding increase in trade, and that this in-
crease of trade could only occur under Ordinary
circumstances, when there was an increase of

BANKS. • 131

twenty millions in the property of the country, to
require such trade.

It can make no difference whether the increase
of currency be occasioned by bank expansions or
the importation of specie. If the specie be not
needed, it will be exported ; if the paper be not
required, it will return on the banks. If either
continue in circulation, it is because the country
is increasing, or has increased its property, (of
other kinds than money,) twenty fold the increase
of currency. The increase of currency must
neither entirely precede nor follow the increase
of business. It should occur as soon and as fast
as prudent, sensible, and honest men are wil-
ling to borrow and employ it. Experienced bank
officers and stockholders will be the best judges
of when and where to increase or diminish the cur-
rency. We conclude that if Virginia be ready
for an increase of her currency in paper or coin,
she is ready for twenty times as much increase of
her property, and that such increase cannot be
permanently made in her currency without pro-
ducing such increase in her property. We be-
lieve she is now ready for a very large increase
of currency, provided such increase be made by
judicious laws, at proper points in the State. —
Without it, industry must remain hampered, and
growth and development be prevented.

132 BANKS.

The doctrine that banks necessarily occasion
speculation and improvidence is untrue. Loans of
coin are used as iinprovidently as loans of paper.
The stockholders, if there were no banks, would
loan their money in specie ; now through the
banks they loan it in paper.

The banks of Virginia, if they err at all, err
on the safe side, that of extreme caution in mak-
ing loans. But they aid the poor, the young and
enterprising, by lending small sums on short
dates to mechanics, merchants, manufacturers, &c.
Private individuals lend their money in large
sums, on long credits, to farmers and other wealthy
capitalists. Money lent by banks, usually exer-
cises a better influence on the well being and
progress of society than money loaned by indi-
viduals. All Southern cities had excess of bank
capital twenty years ago, but this excess neither
produced speculation nor enhanced the price of
town lots.

CHAPTER XI.

D S UEY.

Nothing has more perplexed political econo-
mists and mankind at large, than the subject of
usury. That it was right, proper, and laudable
for every man to get the highest market price
for the use of his money, as for the use of
every other article, was an obvious deduction from
all the axioms of the economists. The instincts
and common sense of mankind, whilst admitting
the premises, stubbornly denied the unavoidable
conclusion. Convicted in argument, but not con-
vinced, they still fought on. In truth, the error
lay in the premises, in the axioms and first prin-
ciples of political economy. That systematic self-
ishness that inculcates the moral duty to let
every man take care of himself and his own self-
ish interest, that advises each to use his wits, his
prudence, and his providence, to get the better
of those who have less wit, prudence and provi-
dence, to make the best bargains one can, and
that a thing is worth what it will bring, is false
and rotten to the core. It bears no sound fruit,
brings forth no good morality. "Laissez nous
faire," and " Caveat Emptor," (the latter the
maxim of the common law,) justify usury, encour-

184 USURY.

age the weak to oppress the strong, and would
justify swindling and theft, if fully carried out
into practice. But it is not safe or prudent to
swindle or steal ; one incurs the penalties of the
law ; and it is not politic, for one scares off cus-
tomers and subjects. The man who makes good
shaving bargains, will in the long run grow rich ;
the swindler and the thief never do. Mankind
have ever detested the extortionate usurer who
takes advantage of distress and misfortune to in-
crease his profits, more than a Robin Hood who
robs the rich to relieve the poor. There is always
at bottom some sound moral reason for the pre-
judices of mankind. Analyze their motives, their
feelings and sentiments closely. The man who
spends a life in dealing hardly and harshly with
his fellow men, is a much worse and meaner man
than the highway robber. The latter is chival-
rous, and where there is chivalry there will be
occasional generosity.

The law should protect men, as well from the
assaults of superior wit as from those of superior
bodily strength. Men's inequalities of wit, pru-
dence, and providence, differ in nothing so much,
as in their capacity to deal in and take care of
money. This creates the necessity for laws against
usury. Under occasional circumstances, a heavy
rate of interest is morally right, but it is gen-
erally wrong, and laws are passed for ordinary
and not extraordinary occasions.

USURY. 135

We do not think badly of our fellow men, but
badly , of their philosophy. , Their kind feelings,
impulses, and sentiments, get the better of their
principles, and they are continually doing good
and preaching fivil.

If men were no better than political economy
would make them, the world would be a Pande-
monium.

The Bible fortunately is a more common book
than Adam Smith. Its influences are exerted
over the hearts and conduct of thousands who
never enter a church. " The still small voice of
conscience" oft brings back the mother's image,
and the mother's divine precepts, "Love thy neigh-
bor as thyself," "Do unto others as you would
that they should do unto you."

As we pursue this investigation, we become
daily more disposed to adopt the theory of Ro-
bespiere, " that political economy and infidelity
are one and the same." It was the Devil rebuk-
ing sin; and well he might, for infidel France
sinned to such an excess as to tire the Devil of
his own work.

: Even the very Devil

On this occasion his own work abhorred,
So surfeited with the infernal revel;

Though he himself had sharpened every sword,
It almost quenched his innate thirst of evil."

CHAPTER XII.

TOWNS, RIVERS AND ROADS.

Towns and villages are breaks that arrest and
prevent the exhausting drain of agriculture, aided
by rivers and roads. They consume the crops of
the neighborhood, its wood and timber, and thus
not only furnish a home market, but manures to
replenish the lands. They afford respectable oc-
cupations, in the mechanic arts, commerce, man-
ufactures, and the professions, for the energetic
young men of the neighborhood. They sustain
good schools, which a sparse country neighbor-
hood never can. They furnish places and oppor-
tunities for association and rational enjoyment to
the neighborhood around. They support good
ministers and churches, and thus furnish religious
consolation and instruction to many who have not
the means to visit distant places of worship. —
Rivers and roads, without towns, are mere facili-
ties offered to agriculture to carry off the crops,
to exhaust the soil, and to remove the inhabi-
tants, rich and poor. This was strikingly exem-
plified in Virginia a few years ago. The people
on the rich lands, on navigable rivers, were a few
absentees, without villages, towns, mechanic arts,
churches or schools. Thev made money at home,

TOWNS, RIVERS AND ROADS. 137

and the rivers tempted them to spend it abroad.
They would not send their grain to the little
towns at the head of tide water, because New
York and Boston were equally convenient, and
better markets to buy and sell in. Our towns
were robbed of the trade of their neighbors be-
low by the rivers, and there were no roads to
bring them trade from above. The poor region
just above the head of tide-water, was becoming
rich from necessity. They were obliged to have
villages, mechanic arts, and manufactures at home.
They had no roads or rivers, and were cut off
from the blessings of free trade. Their villages
contained good schools and churches, and thus
compressed within a small compass the advan-
tages of society and civilization. Most of these
villages will be ruined by the roads we are con-
structing to the West. There will be no use for
them when farmers can sell their crops and get
their supplies on better terms from the large towns.
The agricultural portion of the West will be in-
jured by our system of improvements. Luckily
for the West, her varied and rich mineral re-
sources, and her water-power, will occasion min-
ing and manufactures to be carried on, towns to
arise, and home markets to be offered to the far-
mer. This will be the situation of the West gen-
erally, but in sections where there are neither

138 TOWNS, RIVERS AND ROADS.

mines nor water-power, the country will be impov-
erished by the improvements.

An overgrown State, like an overgrown man,
is not generally equal in wisdom or strength to
one of moderate size. The most distinguished,
learned and wealthy States of ancient and mo-
dern times, have had small dominions and small
populations. They have been obliged, in order to
secure their independence, to prosecute every art,
science, trade and avocation belonging to civil-
ized life. Thus a few came to understand and
practice what many performed in large and cum-
brous States. A small nationality and dense pop-
ulation, not cursed by free trade, necessarily pro-
duces an intense civilization, provided the nation
be of a race that needs and loves civilization.

The effect of free trade and extended dominions,
is to remove from most individuals and sections
the necessity to acquire and practice the arts
of life that require skill and learning, and thus to
dilute and degrade civilization.

But separate nationality is a mere form, not a
reality, when free trade furnishes what the nation
should produce at home.

The cities in the South, on tide-water, will
grow rapidly, as soon as roads enough penetrate the
West. People from the interior, will sell their
grain and buy their manufactures, groceries and
other goods, from those cities. Few, very few,

TOWNS, RIVERS AXD ROADS. 139

will change from the cars to vessels, carry their
grain North, and buy their supplies there. Around
all these Southern cities the country will become
rich. It will be dotted with gardens, orchards
and villas. Large cities, like New York and Lon-
don, are great curses, because they impoverish a
world to enrich a neighborhood. iNumerous small
towns are great blessings, because they prevent
the evil effects of centralization of trade, retain
wealth and population at home, and diffuse hap-
piness and intelligence, by begetting variety of
pursuits, supporting schools, colleges and religious
institutions, and affording the means of pleasant
and frequent association.

Each Southern State may condense within its
boundaries all the elements of separate indepen-
dent nationality. Civilization is imperfect and
incomplete until this state of things arises. Each
State must not only have within itself good law-
yers, doctors and farmers, but able statesmen,
learned philosophers, distinguished artists, skil-
ful mechanics, great authors, and every institu-
tion and pursuit that pertain to high civilization.
Railroads almost invariably increase national
wealth to an amount greatly exceeding the cost
of their construction. In countries purely agri-
cultural, the increase of wealth which they occa-
sion, and the diminution of wealth which, when
properly located, they prevent, is almost incalcu-

140 TOWNS, RIVERS AND ROADS.

lable. All the money spent in the construction
of the road is money saved, for in merely agricul-
tural countries all money not spent in living is
carried off in some way from the country. But,
besides the addition of the road itself, to the
wealth of such a country, the increase of capital
in houses, the enhanced value of lots and lands,
&c, at the town where they terminate, usually
greatly exceeds the [cost of the road. Every
road that has been constructed from any of our
seaboard Atlantic cities, has produced this effect.
They have occasioned already an increase in the
value of property in those cities far greater than
the cost of their construction. Whilst their erec-
tion is going on, they afford respectable and pro-
fitable employment to thousands near their track.
They also afford an excellent market to the far-
mer for his wood and timber, and many other
things that were before unsaleable. From these
various considerations, it would seem to follow,
at first view, that they should be constructed at
State expense. Especially, since it is desirable
that public roads should not be the subjects of
monopoly.

The gross and grievous inequalities in the bur-
den of taxation, and the resulting benefits of
roads constructed at public expense, is a strong
consideration against such mode of construction.
Men living a distance from the roads derive no

TOWNS, RIVERS AND ROADS. 141

advantages from them, yet must pay equally for
building ; men owning valuable stores, taverns,
&c, in the interior, near where a road passes,
are often made to pay for improvements that will
render their property valueless. Whilst the owners
of vacant lots at the termini, who have scarce
paid any of the tax that built the road, make
often immense fortunes by the increase occasioned
in the value of their lots.

On the other hand, when the public spirited
and patriotic, the young, the enterprising and
the poor, erect public improvements, the rich old
fogies laugh at their enterprise, refuse to aid to
the amount of a cent, and Pharisaically con-
gratulate themselves on their virtue, prudence
and good sense, in securing, by the situation of
their property, the larger portion of the profits
arising from such schemes, if successful, without
incurring any risk or a cent of cost.

The towns where they terminate might erect
them and make a profit by doing so. But the
owners of houses, merchandise and money would
pay for them, and the owners of vacant lots reap
most of the profits.

We will not undertake to determine how, or
at whose cost, public improvement should be con-
structed. We think it would be best to lay down
no general rule, but for the Legislature to act on
each application, according to the necessity, char-

142

acter and probable profits and advantages of the
proposed work.

Eastern Virginians often complain that they
are taxed to build roads for the West. Roads
piercing an agricultural interior, and terminating
at towns, at or near the ocean, usually impoverish
the interior and create immense wealth in the
seaboard towns, and in the country near them.

If such should be, and to a great extent it no
doubt will be, the result of our roads, then West-
ern Virginia might with great propriety com-
plain that she was made " to pay for a stick to
break her own head."

Eastern Virginia is exceedingly conservative.
She opposes all innovations, and sticks to mud
roads as pertinaciously as many of her old gen-
try did to fairtops, shorts and kneebuckles. But
she must give way at last, for she is proud and
highly civilized. Rapid intercommunication is the
distinguishing feature of modern progress. 'Tis
part and parcel of the civilization of our times.
Daily mails, telegraphs and railroads are becom-
ing necessaries of life. Fashion is omnipotent,
and these things are exceedingly useful, and "all
the rage" to boot. 'Tis easy to be a prophet in
Eastern Virginia. . She invents nothing, but slowly
and reluctantly follows in the wake of less digni-
fied, more fickle, and progressive regions. Go to
England or the North, and you can foretell our

143

condition ten years hence, as certainly as you can
tell this season in Paris the fashion of ladies' bon-
nets next season in America. We will monopo-
lise the advantages of the system we oppose, for
not more naturally and certainly do rivers bring
detritus and alluvium from the mountains, to lodge
them at their mouths and deltas, than do railroads
briDg the wealth of the interior to enrich the
towns and country on the seaboard.

CHAPTER XIII.

EDUCATION.

The abolitionists taunt us with the ignorance
of our poor white citizens. This is a stigma on
the South that should be wiped out. Half of the
people of the South, or nearly so, are blacks.
We have only to educate the other half. At the
North, they educate all. Our Southern free-trade
philosophy, our favorite maxim, " every man for
himself," has been the cause of the neglect of
popular education. The civilized world differ from
us and censure us. They say it is the first duty
of government to provide for the education of all
its citizens. Despotic Prussia compels parents to
send their children to schools supported at public
expense. All are educated and well educated.
As our's is a government of the people, no where
is education so necessary. The poor, too, ask no
charity, when they demand universal education.
They constitute our militia and our police. They
protect men in possession of property, as in other
countries ; and do much more, they secure men
in possession of a kind of property which they
could not hold a day but for the supervision and
protection of the poor. This very property has

EDUCATION. 145

rendered the South merely agricultural, made
population too sparse for neighborhood schools,
prevented variety of pursuits, and thus cut the
poor off as well from the means of living, as from
the means of education.

Universal suffrage will soon attempt to remedy
these evils. But rashness and precipitancy may
occasion failure and bring about despondency.
We are not yet prepared to educate all. Free
schools should at once be established in all neich-
borhoods where a sufficient number of scholars
can be collected in one school. Parents should
be compelled to send their children to school.
The obligation on the part of government, to ed-
ucate the people, carries with it the indubitable
right to employ all the means necessary to attain
that end. But the duty of government does not
end with educating the people. As far as is
practicable, it should open to them avenues of em-
ployment in which they may use what they have
learned. The system of internal improvements
now carried on in the South, will directly and
indirectly, quite suffice to attain this end, so far
as government can aid properly in such an ob-
ject. Government may do too much for the peo-
ple, or it may do too little. We have committed
the latter error.

The mail and the newspaper-press might be
employed, as cheap and efficient agents, in teach-

146 EDUCATION.

ing the masses. No family in the Union is so dull,
stupid and indifferent, as not to be curious about
the news of the day. Cotemporaneous history is
the most interesting and important part of his-
tory. That is to be had alone from newspapers.
But newspapers contain on all subjects the most
recent discoveries, and the most valuable infor-
mation.

A large weekly newspaper might be furnished
to every poor family in the State, at less than a
dollar a family. If there were not a teacher with-
in fifty miles, some member of each family would
learn to read, first to get at the neighborhood
news and scandals, the deaths, and marriages,
and murders. Gradually they would understand
and become interested in the proceedings of our
government, and the news from foreign countries.
The meanest newspaper in the country is worth
all the libraries in Christendom. It is desirable
to know what the ancients did, but it is neces-
sary to know what our neighbors and fellow
country-men are doing.

Our system of improvements, manufactures,
the mechanic arts, the building up of our cities,
commerce, and education should go hand in hand.
We ought not to attempt too much at once.
'Tis time we were attempting something. We
ought, like the Athenians, to be the best edu-
cated people in the world. When we employ all

EDUCATION. 117

our whites in the mechanic arts, in commerce, in
professions, &c, and confine the negroes to farm-
work, and coarse mechanical operations, we shall
be in a fair way to attain this result. The abo-
lition movement is a harmless humbug, confined
to a handful of fanatics, but the feeling ' of anti-
pathy to negroes, the hatred of race, and the dis-
position to expel them from the country is daily
increasing, North and South. Two causes are in
active operation to fan and increase this hostility
to the negro race. The one, the neglect to edu-
cate and provide means of employment for the
poor whites in the South, who are thereby led to
believe that the existence of negroes amongst us
is ruin to them. The other, the theory of the
Types of Mankind, which cuts off the negro from
human brotherhood, and justifies the brutal and
the miserly in treating him as a vicious brute.
Educate all Southern whites, employ them, not
as cooks, lacqueys, ploughmen, and menials, but
as independent freemen should be employed, and
let negroes be strictly tied down to such callings
•as are unbecoming white men, and peace would
be established between blacks and whites. The
whites would find themselves elevated by the ex-
istence of negroes amongst us. Like the Roman
citizen, the Southern white man would become a
noble and a privileged character, and he would then
like negroes and slavery, because his high posi-

148 EDUCATION.

tion would be clue to them. Poor people can see
things as well as rich people. We can't hide the
facts from them. It is always better openly,
honestly, and fearlessly to meet danger, than to
fly from or avoid it. The last words we will
utter on* this subject are, — The path of safety is
the path of duty ! Educate the people, no matter
what it may cost !

CHAPTER XIV.

EXCLUSIVE AGRICULTURE.

Writing as we do, with the hope of suggesting
some things useful to the South, we deem the sub-
ject of agriculture, their favorite and almost sole
pursuit, one worthy of separate consideration, es-
pecially as it is intimately connected with the
doctrines of free trade. Agriculture can never
be the exclusive pursuit of a civilized people, un-
less by free trade, all other wants than those of
food, are supplied from abroad. Man naturally
gives a preference to agriculture over all other
avocations, because it is the most simple and the
most independent. This preference is greatly in-
creased when the climate and soil are adapted to
its pursuit. Such is the case in the Southern
States, with the additional inducement in its fa-
vor, that the laboring class, the negroes, are
admirably fitted for farming, and too ignorant
and dull for any of the finer processes of the
mechanic arts. Hence the South has become al-
most exclusively agricultural, and hence, also, she
has ever been the advocate of free trade, which
supplies the many wants that agriculture leaves
unsupplied.

150 EXCLUSIVE AGRICULTURE.

The usual and familiar arguments in favor of
this policy are, that it is cheaper to buy abroad
good manufactured articles in exchange for agri-
cultural products, than to buy them at home,
where more indifferent articles would be obtained
for a larger amount of agricultural products.

And again, that we, having no skill or spare
moneyed capital, but possessing a rich soil, fine
climate, and suitable labor for farming, should
follow farming, whilst other nations, without these
advantages, but having a large moneyed capi-
tal, and great artistic and mechanical skill,
should produce manufactured articles, and ex-
change them for our grain and other products,
that thus both we and they would be benefited.
The argument is specious, but as false as it is
specious.

If an agricultural people were found without
any manufactures, by a manufacturing one, the
effect of free trade would be to prevent the in-
vention and practice of all the mechanic arts, for
" necessity is the mother of invention," and such
trade would remove the necessity of home manu-
factures. But, in truth, there never was a people,
however savage, without some knowledge of man-
ufactures and the mechanic arts. When that
knowledge, as in the instances of Africans and
Indians, is very slight, and the processes of course
very tedious, laborious, and inefficient, the im-

EXCLUSIVE AGRICULTURE. 151

mediate effect of contact with a civilized nation
by trade, is to extinguish the little knowledge
they have, and to divert them to fishing, hunting,
searching for gold and similar pursuits, which
savages can practice almost as well as civilized
men. The African ceases to smelt iron when he
finds a day's work in hunting for slaves, iron or
gold, will purchase more and better instruments
than he could make in a week, and the Indian
pursues trapping, and hunting, and fishing, ex-
clusively, when he can exchange his game, his
furs and fish, for blankets, guns, powder and
whiskey, with the American. Thus does free trade
prevent the growth of civilization and depress
and destroy it, by removing the necessity that
alone can beget it. Its effects on agricultural
countries, however civilized, are precisely similar
in character to those on savages. Necessity com-
pels people in poor regions, to cultivate commerce
and the mechanic arts, and for that purpose to
build ships and cities. They soon acquire skill
in manufactures, and all the advantages necessary
to produce them with cheapness and facility.
The agricultural people with whom they trade,
have been bred to exclusive v f arming, by the sim-
plicity of its operations, its independence of life,
and the fertility of their soil. If cut off like
China was, and Japan yet is, from the rest of the
civilized world, they would have to practise at

152 EXCLUSIVE AGRICULTURE.

home all the arts, trades and professions of civi-
lized life, in order to supply the wants of civilized
beings. But trade will supply everything they
need, except the products of the soil. As they
are unskilled in mechanic arts, have few towns,
little accumulated capital, and a sparse popula-
tion, they produce, with great labor and expense,
all manufactured articles. To them it is cheaper,
at present, to exchange their crops for manufac-
tures than to make them. They begin the ex-
change, and each day the necessity increases for
continuing it, for each day they learn to lely
more and more on others to produce articles,
some of which they formerly manufactured, — and
their ignorance of all, save agriculture, is thus
daily increasing. It is cheaper for a man, little
skilled in mechanics, to buy his plough and
wagon by the exchange of agricultural products,
than awkwardly, clumsily and tediously to manu-
facture them of bad quality with his own hands.
Yet, if this same man will become a skilful me-
chanic, he will be able to procure four times as
much agricultural products for his labor, as he
can now secure with his own hands. His labor
too, will be of a lighter, less exposed, more social
character, and far more improving to his mind.
What is -true of the individual, is true as to a
nation, the people who buy their manufactures
abroad, labor four times as hard, and as long, to

EXCLUSIVE AGRICULTURE. 153

produce them, as if they made them at home.
In the case of the nation, this exclusive agri-
culture begets a sparse and poor population ; sparse,
because no more people can be employed, than
are sufficient to cultivate the land, — poor, be-
cause their labor, though harder and more ex-
posed, produces in the aggregate about one-fourth
what the same amount of lighter labor -would/ in
a purely mechanical and manufacturing country.
Density of population doubles and quadruples
the value of labor and of property, because it fur-
nishes the opportunity for association and divi-
sion of labor, and the division of charges and ex-
penses. When one man has to bear the expense
of a school, a church, a mill, a store, a smith's
shop, fee, he is very apt to let his family go with-
out religion and education, and his farm without
many of the necessaries and conveniences [that
properly appertain to it. Where a few have to
bear these expenses, the burden on each is very
heavy, but where, as in manufacturing countries,
with a dense population and many villages, these
expenses are sub-divided among many, the bur-
den is light to each, — so that their property and
their labor is vastly more available and valuable.
The sparsely settled agricultural country makes
by its pursuits, one-fourth what the manufactur-
ing country does, and the money that it makes is
probably, in general, if spent at home, capable

154 EXCLUSIVE AGRICULTURE.

of purchasing one-half only of the pleasures, com-
forts and luxuries of life that the same amount of
money would in countries engaged in other pursuits.
The pleasures of society are seldom indulged in, or
if indulged in, at much expense of time and incon-
venience, in merely farming countries, where peo-
ple live at considerable distance from each other.
There is no occasion for towns or cities, and not
enough of the rich to support places of recrea-
tion and amusement. The rich are, therefore, all
absentees. Some go off for pleasure, some to
religious conventions and associations, some for
education, and those who remain at home, do so
not to spend money and improve the country, but
to save it, in order that they too may hereafter
visit - other regions. The latter class are no less
absentees, in effect, than the former classes.
The consumption abroad, of the crops made at
home would, in two centuries, blast the prosperity
of any country, by robbing it of the manures
which nature intended for it. Where there are
many manufacturing villages they furnish a con-
stant supply of manure to the country around.
The manure made from the farmer's crop, con-
sumed in those villages, is returned to his soil,
mixed with a thousand other fertilizing ingre-
dients from the streets, sewers, and factories of
the town. Thus only can agriculture flourish,
and a soil be kept permanently rich.

EXCLUSIVE AGRICULTURE. 155

Few, very few men, will acquire education, or con-
fer it on their children, unless some pecuniary ad-
vantage is to result from it. The mass of popula-
tion in farming countries are field hands. They
require no education whatever, even if their
wages would procure it. The managers or over-
seers need but little, for much as agricultural
chemistry and scientific farming are talked about,
everybody's instinctive common sense and judg-
ment teaches, that they are part of the humbugs
of the day. No person would employ- an over-
seer who was learned in the natural sciences.
Botany, geology, chemistry, mineralogy, and na-
tural history, do very well for the closet philoso-
pher, but would be dangerous attainments in an
overseer. The farmers of Judea, Egypt, Greece and
Rome, two and four thousand years ago, were better
than ours. Farming rapidly declined in Rome,
so soon as Cato and others attempted to make it
a science. The most potent qualities of soils and
atmospheres evade all analysis. No difference is
found in the death-dealing air of the Pontine
Marshes, and the pure atmosphere of the Appe-
nines. When fever, plague, or cholera rage in
New Orleans, the minutest analysis can detect
nothing in the air that was not there before,
nothing which does not exist in it in the healthiest
regions. Each adjoining acre of land may pro-
duce wine or tobacco of very different qualities,

156 EXCLUSIVE AGRICULTURE,

yet no chemist can tell the why. Philosophy can-
not prevent the weevil, the rust, or the joint
worm.

Chemists undertake to analyze exactly a grain
of wheat, and to determine accurately and pre-
cisely its component parts. Now, when they can
make a grain of wheat, that will vegetate and
grow and bear fruit, we will believe in agricul-
tural chemistry. Till then, we shall contend that
there is something too minute and recondite in
vegetable life for mortal ken to read, and will
throw their physic to the dogs.

The great secrets of animal and vegetable life,
and of their health, growth and decay, are in a
great measure hidden from human search. Philo-
sophy makes no advances in this direction. Galen
and Hippocrates were as good physicians as the
latest graduate of Edinburgh, and Cato as good
a farmer as Mr. Newton. "A Paul may plant,
and an Apollos water, but God alone can give
the increase."

Farming is the recreation of great men, the
proper pursuit of dull men. And the dull are the
most successful, because they imitate, observe,
and never experiment. Washington and Cincin-
natus farmed for amusement, George the Third
and Sancho Panza, because it was their appro-
priate avocation. Ambitious men sometimes, to
hide their designs, and allay suspicion, rear game

EXCLUSIVE AGRICULTURE. 157

cocks, or "cultivate peas and philosophy." But
farmers have no use for learning, and a farming
country would not be a learned one if books grew
on trees, and " reading and writing came by na-
ture."

The population as it increases must emigrate,
for the want of variety of pursuits, and more
avenues of employment. A manufacturing State,
if it can find agricultural people weak enough to
trade with them, may sustain an enlightened pop-
ulation indefinite in numbers, for the more dense
the population, the better it is adapted for me-
chanical and manufacturing pursuits. Internal
improvements, like schools and colleges, cannot
be well sustained in farming States, because the
people are too few and too poor to make or sup-
port them.

Holland and Massachusetts are two of the rich-
est, happiest, and most highly civilized States in
the world, because they farm very little, but are en-
gaged in more profitable and enlightened pursuits.
The soil of Massachusetts is very poor, and that
of Holland not adapted to grain. Ireland, the
East and West Indies, and our Southern States,
are poor and ignorant countries with rich soils.
They farm altogether, and their rich and enter-
prising and ambitious men desert them for pleas-
ure, promotion, or employment, in lands less fa-
vored by nature, but improved by man.

158 . EXCLUSIVE AGRICULTURE.

The South must vary and multiply her pur-
suits, consume her crops at home, keep her peo-
ple at home, increase her population, build up
cities, towns and villages, establish more schools
and colleges, educate the poor, construct inter-
nal improvements, carry on her own commerce,
and carry on that if possible with more Southern
regions : for the North, whether in Europe or
here, will manufacture for, cheat her, and keep
her dependent. She would manufacture for the
far South, and get thus the same profits and ad-
vantages that are now extracted from her by the
North. Do these things and she will be rich,
enlightened and independent, neglect them and
she will become poor, weak and contemptible.
Her State Rights doctrines will be derided, and
her abstractions scoffed at.

In connection with this subject, we will venture
a suggestion to the South, (for we may not pre-
sume to advise,) as to the intellectual progress
and improvement wdrich the mechanic arts, and
those arts alone open to human study, investiga-
tion and invention. We have just stated that
the world has not improved in the last two thou-
sand, probably four thousand years, in the science
or practice of medicine, or agriculture ; we now
add that it has all this while been retrograding
in all else save the physical sciences and the
mechanic arts. Eome imitated and fell short of

EXCLUSIVE AGRICULTURE. 159

Greece, in all the departments of moral philo-
sophy, in pure metaphysics, in poetry, in archi-
tecture, in sculpture, in oratory, in the drama?
and in painting, and we to-day imitate Rome. It
is idle to talk of progress, when we look two
thousand years back for models of perfection.
So vast was Grecian superiority in art above ours,
that it is a common theory, that they possessed
an ideal to guide them, which has been lost, and
which loss is irreparable. The ancients under-
stood the art, practice and science of government
better than we. There was more intelligence,
more energy, more learning, more happiness, more
people, and more wealth, around the Levant, and
in its islands, in the days of Herodotus, than are
now to be found in all Europe.

The only progress or advancement visible to
the eye, is that brought about by the mechanic
arts, aided by physical science. Chemistry and
natural philosophy would have remained dead
letters, had not the mechanic stepped in to con-
struct the cannon and the gun, the compass, the
steam engine, and the electric wire. Looking
back through the vista of ages, the noblest and
oldest monuments of human intellect and human
energy are the works of the mechanic. Long ere
the Muse lisped in liquid and melodious numbers,
long before the buskined Drama trod the stage,
long before the Historian in stately mirch arrayed

160 EXCLUSIVE AGRICULTURE.

the dim and distant past, the Mechanic had built
pyramids, and walls, and cities, and temples, that
have defied the lapse and corrosion of time. We
are at a loss which most to admire, the first ef-
forts of his genius, his energy and skill, as daily
developed at Nineveh, in Egypt, in Rome, and in
Greece, or his latest achievements in his steam-
ships, railroads, immense factories, and time and
distance destroying telegraph. He looks into
heaven with his telescope, he is omnipresent with
his telegraph, may he not reach heaven in some
serial car. Sic itur ad astra ! Let the ambitious
South cultivate, not spurn the mechanic arts.

CHAPTER XY.

THE ASSOCIATION OF LABOR.

If the Socialists had done no other good, they
would be entitled to the gratitude of mankind for
displaying in a strong light the advantages of the
association of labor. Adam Smith, in his elabo-
rate treatise on the Division of Labor, nearly stum-
bled on the same truth. But. the division of labor
is a curse to the laborer, without the association
of labor. Division makes labor ten times more
efficient, but by confining each workman to some
simple, monotonous employment, it makes him a
mere automaton, and an easy prey to the capi-
talist. The association of labor, like all associa-
tions, requires a head or ruler, and that head or
ruler will become a cheat and a tyrant, unless his
interests are identified with the interests of the
laborer. In a large factory, in free society, there
is division of labor, and association too, but asso-
ciation and division for the benefit of the employer
and to the detriment of the laborer. On a large
farm, whatever advances the health, happiness and
morals of the negroes, renders them more prolific
and valuable to their master. It is his interest to
pay them high wages in way of support, and he

162 THE ASSOCIATION OF LABOR.

can afford to do so, because association renders the
labor of each slave five times as productive and
efficient as it would be, were the slaves working
separately. One man could not enclose an acre
of land, cultivate it, send his crops to market, do
his own cooking, washing and mending. One man
may live as a prowling beast of prey, but not as a
civilized being. One hundred human beings, men,
women and children, associated, will cultivate ten
acres of land each, enclose it, and carry on every
other operation of civilized life. Labor becomes
at least twenty times as productive when a hun-
dred associate, as when one acts alone. The same
is as true in other pursuits as in farming. But in
free society, the employer robs the laborer, and he
is no better off than the prowling savage, although
he might live in splendor if he got a fair propor-
tion of the proceeds of his own labor.

We have endeavored to show, heretofore, that
the negro slave, considering his indolence and un-
skilfulness, often gets his fair share, and sometimes
more than his share, of the profits of the farm,
and is exempted, besides, from the harassing cares
and anxieties of the free laborer. Grant, however,
that the negro does not receive adequate wages
from his master, yet all admit that in the aggre-
gate the negroes get better wages than free labor-
ers ; therefore, it follows that, with all its imper-
fections, slave society is the best form of society

THE ASSOCIATION OF LABOR. 163

yet devised for the masses. When Socialists and
Abolitionists, by full and fair experiments, exhibit
a better, it will be time to agitate the subject of
abolition.

The industrial products of black slave labor have
been far greater and more useful to mankind, than
those of the same amount of any other labor. In
a very short period, the South and South-west
have been settled, cleared, fenced in, and put in
cultivation, by what were, a century ago, a handful
of masters and slaves. This region now feeds and
clothes a great part of mankind ; but free trade
cheats them of the profits of their labor. In the
vast amount of our industrial products, we see the
advantages of association — in our comparative pov-
erty, the evils of free trade.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE FREE LABORER'S CARES AND ANXIETIES.

We think we have shown in the preceding chap-
ter, not only that the physical condition of the free
laborer is worse than that of the slave, but that
its evils are intolerable. It is admitted and is
proved to be so by the almost unanimous authority
of rich and poor, learned and ignorant, living in
the midst of free society. What is the mental
condition of the free laborer ? Is he exempt from
the cares that beset wealth and power, and plant
thorns in the path of royalty ?

Poor men have families as well as the rich,, and
they love those families more than rich men, be-
cause they have little else to love. The smiles of
their wives and the prattle of their children, when
they return from labor at night, compensate, in
some degree, for the want of those luxuries which
greet the rich, but which render them less keenly
alive to the pleasures of domestic affection. Their
love is divided between their possessions and their
families ; the poor man's love is intensely concen-
trated on his wife and children. Wife and children
do not always smile and prattle. Want makes them
sad and serious. Cold and hunger and nakedness

THE FREE LABORER'S CARES. 165

give them haggard looks, and then the poor man's
heart bleeds at night as he tosses on his restless
pillow. They are often delicate and sometimes
sick. The parent must go out to toil to provide
for them, nevertheless. He cannot watch over their
sick beds like the rich. Apprehension does not
sweeten and lighten his labors. Xor does loss of
rest in watching and nursing a sick wife or child
better fit him to earn his wages the next day. The
poor have not the cares of wealth, but the greater
cares of being without it. They have no houses,
know not when they may be turned out of rented
ones, or when, or on what terms they may rent
another. This must be looked to and provided for.
The head of the family gets sick sometimes, too.
Wages cease. Does it soothe fever and assuage
pain to look at a destitute family, or to reflect
on the greater destitution that awaits them, if he,
the parent, should die ? Is he in health and get-
ting good wages — the competition of fellow-laborers
may any day reduce his wages or turn him out of
employment. The poor free man has all the cares
of the rich, and a thousand more besides. When
the labors of the day are ended, domestic anxieties
and cares begin. The usual, the ordinary, the nor-
mal condition of the whole laboring class, is thaf of
physical suffering, cankering, corroding care, and
mental apprehension and pain. The poor houses
and poor rates prove this. The ragged beggar

166 THE FREE LABORER'S

children in the streets, and their suffering parents
pining in cellars and garrets, attest it. Destitute
France, poor Scotland, and starving Ireland pro-
claim it. The concurrent testimony of ail history
and of all statistics, for three centuries, leave no
room for cavil or for doubt. Why, in this age of
progress, are the great majority of mankind, in
free countries, doomed to live in penitential pains
and purgatorial agony ? They, the artificers of
every luxury, of every comfort, and every neces-
sary of life, see the idle enjoying the fruits of their
toil. Is there a just God in Heaven, and does he
see, approve and" ordain all this? Has it ever
been thus ? If so, God delights in human agony,
and created man to punish him. All other ani-
mals enjoy life,' and did God make man after his
own image, that life should be a pain and a tor-
ture to him ? Bad as the laboring man's condi-
tion is now, those who live in free society tell us
it was far worse formerly. He used to be a slave,
and they say slavery is a far worse condition to
the laborer than liberty. Well, for the argument,
we grant it. His condition was worse throughout
all past times in slavery, than now with liberty.
Is it consistent with the harmony of nature, or
the wisdom and mercy of God, that such a being
should be placed in this world, and placed, too,
at the head of it ? It is rank Diabolism to admit
such a conclusion. None but Lucifer would have
made such a world.

CARES AND ANXIETIES. 167

God made no such -world ! He instituted slavery
from the first, as he instituted marriage and pa-
rental authority. Profane, presumptuous, igno-
rant man, in attempting to improve, has marred
and defaced the work of his Creator. "Wife and
children, although not free, are relieved from care
and anxiety, supported and protected, and their
situation is as happy and desirable as that of the
husband and parent. In. this we see the doings
of a wise and just God. The slave, too, when
the night comes, may lie down in peace. He has
a master to watch over and take care of him. If
he be sick, that master will provide for him. If
his family be sick, his master and mistress sym-
pathise with his affliction, and procure medical
aid for the sick. And when he comes to die, he
feels that his family will be provided for. He
does all the labor of life ; his master bears all its
corroding cares and anxieties. Here, again, we
see harmonious relations, consistent with the wis-
dom and mercy of God. We see an equal and
even-handed justice meted out to all alike, and
we see life itself no longer a terrestrial purgatory ;
but a season of joy and sorrow to the rich and
the poor.

Man is naturally associative, because isolated
and alone he is helpless. The object of all asso-
ciations, from States to Temperance societies, is
mutual insurance. Man does not feel the advan-

168 THE FREE LABORER'S CARES.

tage of State insurance, until he is driven to the
poor house. House insurance companies- and life
insurance companies often fail ; and when success-
ful, only insure against a class of misfortunes.
The insurance of Trade Unions, Odd Fellows,
and Temperance societies, is wholly inadequate.
Slavery insurance never fails, and covers all losses
and all misfortunes. Domestic slavery is nature's
mutual insurance society ; art in vain attempts to
imitate it, or to supply its place.

CHAPTER XVII.

LIBERTY ANJD FREE TRADE.

These are convertible terms ; two names for the
same thing. Statesmen, orators, and philosophers,
the tories of England, and the whigs of America,
have been laboring incessantly for more than half
a century to refute the doctrine of free trade.
They all and each failed to produce a single plausi-
ble argument in reply. Not one of their books or
speeches survived a month. Not one ever was, or
ever will be, quoted or relied on as authority to
disprove the principles of political economy. The
reason is obvious enough ; they were all confused
by words, or afraid to make the proper issue.
They first admitted liberty to be a good, and then
attempted, but attempted in vain, to argue that
free trade was an evil. The socialists stumbled
on the true issue, but do not seem yet fully aware
of the nature of their discovery. Liberty was the
evil, liberty the disease under which society was suf-
fering. It must be restricted, competition be ar-
rested, the strong be restrained from, instead of en-
couraged to oppress the weak — in order to restore
society to a healthy state. To them we are indebt-
ed for our argument against free trade. We have

H

170 LIBERTY AND FREE TRADE.

extended it and explained its application. They
demonstrated that social free trade was an evil,
because it incited the rich and strong to oppress
the weak, poor and ignorant. We saw that the
disparities of mental strength were greater be-
tween races and nations than between individuals
in the same society. History spoke less equivo-
cally as to the ruinous effects of international
free trade, than as to those of social free trade.

Events are occurring every day, especially at
the North, that show that religious liberty must be
restricted as well as other liberty.

Chinese idolaters are coming in swarms too, to
California. If they are to be permitted to prac-
tise their diabolical rights, the negroes should be
allowed to revert to the time-honored customs of
their ancestors, and immolate human victims to
their devil deity. Mormonism is still a worse re-
ligious evil, which Ave have to deal with.

Liberty is an evil which government is intended
to correct. This is the sole object of government.
Taking these premises, it is easy enough to re-
fute free trade. Admit liberty to be a good, and
you leave no room to argue that free trade is an
evil, — because liberty is free trade.

With thinking men, the question can never arise,
who ought to be free ? Because no one ought to
be free. All government is slavery. The pro-
per subject of investigation for philosophers and
philanthropists is, "Is the existing mode of gov-

LIBERTY AXD FREE TRADE. 171

ernment adapted to the wants of its subjects ?"
No one will contend that negroes, for instance,
should roam at large in puris naturalibus, with the
apes and tigers of Africa, and " worry and de-
vour each other." Nor are they fitted for an
Athenian democracy. "What form of government
short of domestic slavery will suit their wants
and capacities ? That is the true issue, and we
direct the attention of abolitionists to it. They
are now striking wild, and often hit the Bible,
and marriage tie, and the right of property, and
the duties of children to their parents and guar-
dians, harder blows, than they do negro slavery.
They are mere anarchists and infidels. If they
would take our advice, they would appear more
respectable, do less harm, and might suggest some
good. For domestic slavery like all human insti-
tutions, has its imperfections — will always have
them. Yet it is our duty to correct such as can
be corrected, and we would do so, if the aboli-
tionists would let us alone, or advise with us as
friends, neighbors and gentlemen.

CHAPTER XVIII.

HEAD-WORK AND HAND-WORK.

Parents often warn their children, that they
must live by hand-work or head-work. That the
latter is far preferable, because the work is lighter,
pays much better, and is generally in far higher
esteem with the world. Virtue, intelligence and
good education are necessary to success in the
latter. No man cares much what the character
of his ditcher or ploughman is, but his merchant,
his lawyer, his mechanics, and his physician must
be men of good sense and good morals. Thus
do parents hold out incentives to virtuous exer-
tion. Governors and rulers should do the same.
States must live by hand-work or head-work. The
production of books on the various arts and
sciences, and on other subjects, the manufacture
of fine silks, woolens, calicoes, shawls, the mak-
ing of exquisite porcelain, the building of ships,
and steamboats, the construction of machinery,
and a thousand other pursuits that we could enu-
merate, require intelligence and attainments of
the highest order, and good character besides,
else no one would buy what would probably be a
cheat or a counterfeit. A nation chiefly engaged

HEAD-WORK AND HAND-WORK. 173

in such pursuits, follows head-work, works within
doors, labors lightly, and makes five times as much
as one engaged in the coarsest occupations of
mere hand-work. There cannot be a surplus pop-
ulation with such a people, because they have the
world for a market to buy and sell in, and the
more dense and numerous the population, the
better opportunities are afforded for the associa-
tion and division of labor, which increase its pro-
ductiveness and lighten its burdens.

The very reverse of all this has been, till lately,
the policy and practice of the South, inculcated
and encouraged by her so called philosophers and
statesmen. She has pursued the very lowest and
coarsest hand-work, — work which required neither
character nor intelligence, and which shut out the
light of education, by rendering education unne-
cessary, or when necessary, making it impractica-
ble from the sparseness of population. She has
worked hard and been badly paid. On an aver-
age, the products of four hours of her hand work
are exchanged for the results of one hour of such
light work as we first described.

Peoples and individuals must live by hand-work,
or head-work, and those who live by head-work
are always, in fact, the masters of those who live
by hand-work. They take the products of their
labor without paying an equivalent in equal labor.
The hand-work men and nations are slaves in fact,

174 HEAD-WORK AND HAND-WORK.

because they do not get paid for more than one-
fourth of their labor. The South has, hereto-
fore, worked three hours for Europe and the
North, and one for herself. It is one of the
beautiful results of free trade.

CHAPTER XIX.

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE AND VIRGINIA
BILL OF RIGHTS,

An essay on the subject of slavery would be
very imperfect, if it passed over without noticing
these instruments. The abstract principles which
they enunciate, we candidly admit, are wholly at
war with slavery ; we shall attempt to show that
they are equally at war with all government, all
subordination, all order. Men's minds were heated
and blinded when they were written, as well by
patriotic zeal, as by a false philosophy, which, be-
ginning with Locke, in a refined materialism, had
ripened on the Continent into open infidelity. In
England, the doctrine of prescriptive government,
of the divine right of kings, had met with sig-
nal overthrow, and in France there was faith in
nothing, speculation about everything. The hu-
man mind became extremely presumptuous, and
undertook to form governments on exact philoso-
phical principles, just as men make clocks, watches
or mills. They confounded the moral with the
physical world, and this was not strange, because
they had begun to doubt whether there was any
other than a physical world. Society seemed to

176 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

them a thing whose movement and action could
be controlled with as much certainty as the mo-
tion of a spinning wheel, provided it was organ-
ized on proper principles. It would have been
less presumptuous in them to have attempted to
have made a tree, for a tree is not half so com-
plex as a society of human beings, each of whom
is fearfully and wonderfully compounded of soul
and body, and whose aggregate, society, is still
more complex and difficult of comprehension than
its individual members. Trees grow and man
may lop, trim, train and cultivate them, and thus
hasten their growth, and improve their size,
beauty and fruitfulness. Laws, institutions, so-
cieties, and governments grow, and men may aid
their growth, improve their strength and beauty,
and lop off their deformities and excrescences, by
punishing crime and rewarding virtue. When
society has worked long enough, under the hand
of God and nature, man observing its operations,
may discover its laws and constitution. The
common law of England and the constitution of
England, were discoveries of this kind. Fortu-
nately for us, we adopted, with little change, that
common law and that constitution. Our institu-
tions and our ancestry were English. Those in-
stitutions were the growth and accretions of many
ages, not the work of legislating philosophers.

AND VIRGINIA BILL OF RIGHTS. 177

The abstractions contained in the various in-
struments on which we professed, but professed
falsely, to found our governments, did no harm,
because, until abolition arose, they remained a
dead letter. Now, and not till now, these abstrac-
tions have become matters of serious practical
importance, and we propose to give some of them
a candid, but fearless examination. We find these
words in the preamble and Declaration of Inde-
pendence,

"We hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal; that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain ina-
lienable rights, that among them, are life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness ; that to secure
these rights governments are instituted among
men, deriving their just powers from the consent
of the governed ; that whenever any form of gov-
ernment becomes destructive of these ends it is
the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and
to institute a new government, laying its foun-
dations on such principles, and organizing its
powers in such form, as to them shall seem most
likely to effect their safety and happiness."

It is, we believe, conceded on all hands, that men
are not born physically, morally or intellectually
equal, — some are males, some females, some from
birth, large, strong and healthy, others weak,
small and sickly — some are naturally amiable,

178 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

others prone to all kinds of wickednesses — some
brave, others timid. Their natural inequalities
beget inequalities of rights. The weak in mind
or body require guidance, support and protection ;
they must obey and work for those who protect
and guide them — they have a natural right to
guardians, committees, teachers or masters. Na-
ture has made them slaves ; all that law and gov-
ernment can do, is to regulate, modify and miti-
gate their slavery. In the absence of legally in-
stituted slavery, their condition would be worse
under that natural slavery of the weak to the
strong, the foolish to the wise and cunning. The
wise and virtuous, the brave, the strong in mind
and body, are by nature born to command and
protect, and law but follows nature in making
them rulers, legislators, judges, captains, husbands,
guardians, committees and masters. The natu-
rally^ depraved class, those born prone to crime,
are our brethren too ; they are entitled to edu-
cation, to religious instruction, to all the means
and appliances proper to correct their evil propen-
sities,*and all their failings ; they have a right to be
sent to the penitentiary, — for there, if they do
not reform, they cannot at least disturb society.
Our feelings, and our consciences teach us, that
nothing but necessity can justify taking human
life.

We are but stringing together truisms, which
every body knows as well as ourselves, and yet

AND VIRGINIA BILL OF RIGHTS. 179

if men are created unequal in all these respects,
what truth or what meaning is there in the pas-
sage under consideration ? Men are not created
or born equal, and circumstances, and education,
and association, tend to increase and aggravate
inequalities among them, from generation to gen-
eration. Generally, the rich associate and in-
termarry with each other, the poor do the same ;
the ignorant rarely associate with or intermarry
with the learned, and all society shuns contact
with the criminal, even to the third and fourth
generations.

Men are not " born entitled to equal rights !"
It would be far nearer the truth to say, "that
some were born with saddles on their backs, and
others booted and spurred to ride them." — and
the riding does them good. They need the reins,
the bit and the spur. No two men by nature are
exactly equal or exactly alike. No institutions
can prevent the few from acquiring rule and as-
cendency over the many. Liberty and free com-
petition invite and encourage the attempt of the
strong to master the weak ; and insure their suc-
cess.

"Life and liberty" are not "inalienable:" they
have been sold in all countries, and in all ages,
and must be sold so long as human nature lasts.
It is an inexpedient and unwise, and often un-
merciful restraint, on a man's liberty of action, to

180 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

deny him the right to sell himself when starv-
ing, and again to buy himself when fortune
smiles. Most countries of antiquity, and some,
like China at the present day, allowed such sale
and purchase. The great object of government
is to restrict, control and punish man "in the
pursuit of happiness." All crimes are committed
in its pursuit. Under the free or competitive
system, most men's happiness consists in destroy-
ing the happiness of other people. This, then, is
no inalienable right.

The author of the Declaration may have, and
probably did mean, that all men were created
with an equal title to property. Carry out such
a doctrine, and it would subvert every government
on earth.

In practice, in all ages, and in all countries,
men had sold their liberty either for short periods,
for life, or hereditarily; that is, both their own
liberty and that of their children after them. The
laws of all countries have, in various forms and
degrees, in all times recognised and regulated
this right to alien or sell liberty. The soldiers
and sailors of the revolution had aliened both
liberty and life, the wives in all America had
aliened their liberty, so had the apprentices and
wards at the very moment this verbose, new-
born, false and unmeaning preamble was written.

AND VIRGINIA BILL OF RIGHTS. 181

Mr. Jefferson was an enthusiastic speculative
philosopher; Franklin was wise, cunning and judi-
cious; he made no objection to the Declaration,
as prepared by Mr. Jefferson, because, probably,
he saw it would suit the occasion and supposed it
would be harmless for the future. But even
Franklin was too much of a physical philosopher,
too utilitarian and material in his doctrines, to
be relied on in matters of morals or government.
We may fairly conclude, that liberty is alienable,
that there is a natural right to alien it, first, be-
cause the laws and institutions of all countries
have recognized and regulated its alienation ; and
secondly, because we cannot conceive of a civilized
society, in which there were no wives, no wards,
no apprentices, no sailors and no soldiers ; and
none of these could there be in a country that
practically carried out the doctrine, that liberty
is inalienable.

The soldier who meets death at the cannon's
mouth, does so because he has aliened both life
and liberty. Nay, more, he has aliened the pur-
suit of happiness, else he might desert on- the eve
of battle, and pursue happiness in some more
promising quarter than the cannon's mouth. If
the pursuit of happiness be inalienable, men
should not be punished for crime, for all crimes
are notoriously committed in the pursuit of hap-
piness. If these abstractions have some hidden

182 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

and cabalistic meaning, -which none but the ini-
tiated can comprehend, then the Declaration
should have been accompanied with a translation,
and a commentary to fit it for common use, — as
it stands, it deserves the tumid yet appropriate epi-
thets which Major Lee somewhere applies to the
writings of Mr. Jefferson, it is, " exhuberantly
false, and arborescently fallacious."

Nothing can be found in all history more un-
philosophical, more presumptuous, more character-
istic of the infidel philosophy of the 18th century,
than the language that follows that of which we
have been treating. How any observant man,
however unread, should have come to the conclu-
sion, that society and government were such plas-
tic, man-created things, that starting on certain
general principles, he might frame them success-
fully as he pleased, we are at a loss to conceive.
But infidelity is blind and foolish, and infidelity
then prevailed. Lay your foundations of govern-
ment on what principles you please, organize its
powers in what form you choose, and you cannot
foresee the results. You can only tell what laws,
institutions and governments will effect, when you
apply them to the same race or nation under the
same circumstances in which they have already
been tried. But philosophy then was in the chry-
salis state. She has since deluged the world with
blood, crime and pauperism. She has had full

AND VIRGINIA BILL OF RIGHTS. 183

sway, and has inflicted much misery, and done no
good. The world is beginning to be satisfied, that
it is much safer and better, to look to the past,
to trust to experience, to follow nature, than to
be guided by the ignis fatuus of a priori specu-
lations of closet philosophers. If all men had
been created equal, all would have been competi-
tors, rivals, and enemies. Subordination, differ-
ence of caste and classes, difference of sex, age
and slavery beget peace and good will.

We were only justified in declaring our inde-
pendence, because we were sufficiently wise, nu-
merous and strong to govern ourselves, and too
distant and distinct from England to be well gov-
erned by her.

Moses and Confucius, Solon, Lycurgus and
English Alfred, were Keformers, Revisors of the
Code. They, too, were philosophers, but too pro-
found to mistake the province of philosophy and
attempt to usurp that of nature. They did not frame
government on abstract principles, they indulged
in no "a priori' reasoning; but simply lopped off
what was bad, and retained, modified and simplified
what was good in existing institutions —

"And that's as high,
As metaphysic wit can fly."

The first clause of the Bill of Rights of Vir-
ginia, contains language of like import with that
which we have been criticising. The fourth clause

184 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

is in the following words : — " That no man or set of
men are entitled to exclusive or separate privileges
from the rest of the community, but in consider-
ation of public services : which not being discendi-
ble, neither ought the offices of magistrate, legis-
lator or judge, to be hereditary." This is very
bad English and is so obscurely expressed, that
we can only guess at the meaning intended to be
conveyed. We suppose, that " exclusive or sepa-
rate emoluments and privileges," was intended to
apply to such harmless baubles as titles of nobil-
ity and coats of arms, and to petty ill-paid offi-
cers, and that the author never dreamed that here-
ditary property, however large, was a "separate
emolument or privilege."

The author saw no objection to the right se-
cured by law to hold five hundred subjects or
negro slaves, and ten thousand acres of land, to
the exclusion of everybody else, and to trans-
mit them to one's children and grand-children,
although an exclusive hereditary privilege far
transcending any held by the nobility of Eu-
rope, — for the nobility of Russia do not hold
such despotic sway over their serfs, as we do
over our negroes, and are themselves mere slaves
to the Emperor, whilst our slaveholders have
scarcely any authority above them. We have
no doubt the author, like our modern far-
mers, considered this "a mere circumstance,"

AND VIRGINIA BILL OF RIGHTS. 185

and would have told you that a man has a na-
tural right to his lands and negroes, a natural
right to what belonged to his father.

Property is not a natural and divine, but con-
ventional right ; it is the mere creature of so-
ciety and law. In this all lawyers and publicists
agree. In this country, the history of property
is of such recent date, that the simplest and most
ignorant man must know, that it commenced in
wrong, injustice and violence a few generations
ago, and derives its only title now from the will
of society through the sanction of law. Society
has no right, because it is not expedient, to re-
sume any one man's property because he abuses
its possession, and does not so employ it as to
redound to public advantage, — but if all private
property, or if private property generally were
so used as to injure, instead of promote public
good, then society might and ought to destroy the
whole institution.

From these premises, it follows that government,
in taxing private property, should only be limited
by the public good. If the tax be so heavy as to
deter the owner from improving the property, then,
in general, will the whole public be injured.

False notions of the right of property, and of
the duties and liabilities of property holders, de-
stroy all public spirit and patriotism, cripple and
injure, and prevent the growth and development

186 DECLARATION OP INDEPENDENCE

of the South. We feel it our duty to deflect a
little from our subject to expose these errors.

Now, a natural right is a "divine right," and
if we Southern farmers have a divine right to
our little realms and subjects, is it not hard to
dispute the like right in sovereigns, on a larger
scale. The world discovered that the power of
kings was a trust power conferred on them for
the good of the people, and to be exercised
solely for that purpose — or else forfeited. Are
we guilty of treason in suggesting that farmers
have no better titles than kings, and that the LAW
vests them with separate property in lands and
negroes, under the belief and expectation that
such separate property will redound more to pub-
lic advantage than if all property were in com-
mon ? We have an aristocracy with more of
privilege, and less of public spirit, than any that
we meet with in history. Less of public spirit,
because they cherish that free trade philosophy
which inculcates selfishness as a moral and politi-
cal duty, which teaches that the public good is best
promoted when nobody attends to public affairs,
but each one is intent on his own private ends.
Naturally, Southerners, like all slaveholders, are
liberal and public spirited. It is their philosophy
that has taken away their patriotism. Accord-
ing to the sense in which the term "public ser-
vices" is used, meaning, no doubt, official services,

AND VIRGINIA BILL OF RIGHTS. 187

in the Bill of Rights, no farmer could hold his
lands and negroes a day, for they have not ren-
dered public services as a consideration for their
great, " exclusive and separate emolument and
privilege."

Institutions are what men can see, feel, ven-
erate and understand. The institutions of Moses
and of Alfred remain to this day, those of Numa
and Lycurgus had a long and nourishing life.
These sages laid down no abstract propositions,
founded their institutions on no general princi-
ples, had no written constitutions. They were
wise from experience, adopted what history and
experience had tested, and never trusted to a
priori speculations, like a More, a Locke, a. Jef-
ferson, or an Abbe Sieyes. Constitutions should
never be written till several centuries after gov-
ernments have been instituted, for it requires that
length of time to ascertain how institutions will
operate. No matter how you define and limit,
in words, the powers and duties of each depart-
ment of government, they will each be sure to
exercise as much power as possible, and to en-
croach to the utmost of their ability on the powers
of other departments. When the Commons were
invoked to Parliament, the king had no idea they
would usurp the taxing powers ; but having suc-
cessfully done so, it became part of the English
constitution, that the people alone could tax them-

188 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

selves. It was never intended that ninety-nine
guilty should escape, socner than one innocent
man be punished ; yet, finding that the result of
the English judicial system, the judges and law-
yers made a merit of necessity, and adopted it
as a maxim of the common law. So, in a hundred
instances we could show, that in England a con-
stitution means the modus operandi of institutions,
not prescribed, but ascertained from experience.
In this country we shall soon have two constitu-
tions, that a priori thing which nobody regards,
and that practical constitution deduced from ob-
servation of the workings of our institutions. —
Whisrs disregard our written constitution, when
banks, tariffs or internal improvements are in
question ; Democrats respect it not when there
is a chance to get more territory ; and Young
America, the dominant party of the clay, will
jump through its paper obstructions with as much
dexterity as harlequin does through the hoop.
State governments, and senators, and represen-
tatives, and militia, and cities, and churches, and
colleges, and universities, and landed property,
are institutions. Things of flesh and blood, that
know their rights, "and knowing dare maintain
them." We should cherish them. They will give
permanence to government, and security to State
Rights. But the abstract doctrines of nullification
and secession, the general principles laid down

AXD VIRGINIA BILL OF RIGHTS. 189

in the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of
Rights, and Constitution of the United States,
afford no protection of rights, no valid limita-
tions of power, no security to State Rights. The
power to construe them, is the power to nullify
them. Mere paper guarantees, like the constitu-
tions of Abbe Sieves, are as worthless as the
paper on which they are written.

Our institutions, founded on such generalities
and abstractions as those of which we are treat-
ing, are like a splendid edifice built upon kegs of
gunpowder. The abolitionists are trying to apply
the match to the explosive materials under our
Parliament House ; we are endeavoring to anti-
cipate them by drenching those materials with ridi-
cule. No body deems them worth the trouble of
argument, or the labor of removal. They will
soon become incombustible and innocuous.

Property is too old and well-tried an institution,
too much interwoven with the feelings, interests,
prejudices and affections of man, to be shaken by
the speculations of philosophers. It is only its
mal-administration that can endanger it. So far
from wishing to shake or undermine property, we
would, for the public good, give it more perma-
nence. "We do not like the Western Homestead
provision of forty acres, because that entails on
families poverty and ignorance, and tends to de-
press civilization. We do not like the large en-

190 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

tails of England, because they beget an idle,
useless and vicious aristocracy. But lands do
not breed as men do, and we can see no good pub-
lic reason for cutting up small farms, at the end
of each generation, and thus preventing good and
permanent improvements, and incurring the oft-re-
peated labor of making new enclosures, and new but
slight buildings. For public good, and property
ought to be administered for public good, it would
be better to have some law of primogeniture where
the lands were of a convenient size to keep to-
gether. A law entailing farms of such amount
as would educate families well, without putting
them above the necessity of industry and exer-
tion, would add much to national wealth, in en-
couraging good and permanent improvements,
and would improve national character and intel-
ligence, by securing a class of well educated men,
attached to the soil and the country. We need
not fear the mad dog cry of aristocracy ; a man
with an entailed estate of five hundred acres, and
a coat of arms to boot, would not be a very dan-
gerous character. Whilst men with twenty thou-
sand acres of illy cultivated lands and five hun-
dred idle negroes, or bankers wielding five mil-
lions, all of which they may entail or settle in their
families for generations to come, are to all intents
and purposes, as good aristocrats as any German
Princes. We have the things, exclusive heredi-

AND VIRGINIA BILL OF RIGHTS. 191

tary privileges and aristocracy, amongst us, in
their utmost intensity ; let us not be frightened at
the names ; but so mould our institutions, regard-
less of prejudices, technicalities, names, or titles,
as will best promote, "the greatest good of the
greatest number."

Too much insecurity of property invites to ex-
travagance and speculation, and prevents refine-
ment and continued progress. Property should
remain several generations in a family to beget
learning, skill, and high moral qualifications.

Lands divided minutely, depress all pursuits ;
for small farms want only coarse and cheap arti-
cles, quack doctors, illiterate parsons, and igno-
rant attorneys. When farms are too large, they
occasion a sparse population, absenteeism of the
rich, and a sort of colonial or plantation life.
Either extreme is equally to be avoided, and,
therefore, the State should determine the amount
of land subject to the laws of primogeniture and
entail. Such laws might be enacted without any
shock to existing titles, and would vastly enhance
the value of our lands. People who are tired,
(and half the world is,) of the too frequent ups
and downs of American life, would rush to Vir-
ginia to invest their money. If other States did
not follow our example, Virginia would, in five
years, be the first State in wealth and intelli-
gence in the Union. If such arrangement be best

192 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

for all society, then it is the most democratic
arrangement, for it is the essence of democracy
to consult the good of the whole. Landed pro-
perty thus held, would become an institution at-
taching its owners to our government. Patriotism
and love of country, virtues now unknown at the
South, would prevail, and give permanence and
security to society.

No great advantages accrue to society, either
in wealth, morals, or intelligence, by the frequent
change of property from hand to hand, and from
family to family. Lands would become useless, if
minutely divided between all the members of the
community. The law now devolves lands in case
of intestacy on all a man's children. The laws
of most countries have devolved them on the
male children, or on one child. None have a
natural right to them. If it be expedient that
they should descend to one child, and be con-
tinued in the family, there is nothing in natural
justice or equity to oppose the arrangement.
Five hundred acres of land and thuty negroes,
would suffice to educate all the younger members
of the family, and make useful citizens of them.
Primogeniture and entails have had this good ef-
fect in England. The younger sons have filled
the professions, the church, the army, and the
navy, with able, ambitious men. It has furnished
London and Liverpool with the best merchants in

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, AC. 193

the world, and made trade one of the most hon-
orable professions.

It is pleasing to see the poor acquiring lands,
but the pleasure is more than balanced, with all
save the malicious, by seeing the rich stripped of
them. Those accustomed to poverty, suffer little
from it. Those who have been rich, are misera-
ble when they become poor.

CHAPTER XX.

THE MARRIAGE RELATION.

The Roman dwelling was a holy and sacred
place ; a temple of the gods, over which Manes,
and Lares, and Penates watched and hovered.
Each hearthstone was an altar on which daily
sacrifice was offered. The family was hedged all
round with divinities, with departed ancestry puri-
fied and apotheosised, who with kindly interest
guarded and guided the household. Roman ele-
vation of sentiment and of character is easily
accounted for, when we reflect that they felt
themselves ever in the presence of deities. That
pure religious sentiment was associated with
these deities, a single passage from Virgil will
prove. iEneas, on that night that Troy was
sacked, forced at length to fly with his family,
does not forget in his haste and confusion, the
family gods.

Tu, genitor, cape pacra manu, patriosque Penates.
Me, bello e tanto digressurn, et cascle recenti
Attrectare nefas . donee me flumine vivo
Abluero.

The Catholic Church did much to preserve the
sanctity and purity of the family circle, by making

THE MARRIAGE RELATION. 195

marriage a religious sacrament ; the Episcopal
Church something in making it a holy ordinance ;
and in its ritual, which reminded the parties of
the solemn and sacred engagements into which
they were about to enter. But as liberty, equality
and fraternity adranced, it was reduced, at the
free North, to a mere civil contract, entered into
with no more thought, ceremony or solemnity than
the bargain for a horse. "We shall not sully our
sheet with descriptions of the marriage relation
as it often presents itself now, even in good society
in free Europe and in free America. Shakers,
and Oneida Perfectionists and Mormons, are the
legitimate fruits of modern progress. Surely
women ought to be free as well as negroes. In
Utah, (the highest and latest result of liberty,
equality, and fraternity,) the family dwelling,
which in heathen Rome was a temple of the
Gods, has been converted into a den of prosti-
tutes. What a rise, from pious and pagan
iEneas, to Brigham Young the Yankee Christian
of the latest cut and newest fashion !

CHAPTER XXI.

THE MORALS OF FREE SOCIETY.

Let heav'n kiss earth ! Now let not nature's hand
Keep the wild flood confin'd ! let order die !
And let this world no longer he a stage,
To feed contention in a lingering act;
But let one spirit of the first-horn Cain
Reign in all bosoms, that each heart being set
On bloody courses, the rude scene may end
And darkness be the burier of the dead !

Second Part op King Henry IV.

"Liberty, Equality and Fraternity," is the
motto and watchword of Frenchmen when they
turn out to murder each other wholesale. They
are an epigramatic people, and have a happy way
of condensing into a phrase or maxim, a whole
code of philosophy. The same idea had been
floating in men's minds ever since the Reformation

"What oft was thought, but ne'er so well expressed."

It had borne, too, everywhere the same fruits.
The seventy years' wars in Germany are further
off in time and distance than the French Revo-
lution, but were quite as prolific of murder, rape
and rapine, as those amiable events themselves.
They were the first exhibitions on a large scale,
of the new philosophy of Liberty, Equality and

THE MORALS OF FREE SOCIETY. 197

Fraternity. The revocation of the edict of Nan-
tes, and the Vespers of St. Bartholemew, were
small events compared to the days of the Guillo-
tine ; but nevertheless, they were highly respec-
table and intense expressions of that fraternity
which nascent liberty was begetting. The Gun-
powder plot, too, but for an unlucky contre temps,
would have resulted in a very strong expression
of the affectionate brotherly interest which men
feel for one another's well being, both in this
world and the world to come. Shortly thereafter,
when liberty openly reared her standard, and
Cromwell burnt houses, and Sir Thomas Lunsford
ate babies, men began to believe that the world
was really blessed with the millenial advent of
Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Charles and
Jeffries put a stop to it for a while: yet to-
wards the later part of his reign, Charles wisely
resolved to give a holy day, and indulge his people
with a bloody carnival. The little Titus Oates
affair that followed, showed that men's affections
for each other had not at all abated, and were
ready to exhibit themselves in the most passionate
manner, whenever the restraints of government
were removed.

Our Pilgrim fathers being denied the opportu-
nity of practicing to its full extent the divine
precept — "Love thy neighbor as thyself" — re-
moved to America, and here proved to the world

198 THE MORALS OF FREE SOCIETY.

that they had not degenerated since the unctuous
days of Knox and of Cromwell. Many tokens
of their zeal and affection were soon seen pendant
from the elms of New England ; and with a deli-
cate discrimination, that affection selected the
ugliest and oldest of the weaker sex, on whom to
lavish its embraces.

Has the world " supped full with horrors," or
a mere caprice of fashion brought about new
modes of manifesting attachment ? Frenchmen
kiss and hug, Americans shake hands, and Eng-
lishmen scowl and bow; yet they all mean the
same thing — 'tis fashion rules the hour. So it
may be that cheating and starving our fellow
beings is now the rage, instead of shooting and
burning them. Those three hundred thousand
starved in Ireland, show clearly enough that Lib-
erty, Equality and Fraternity have lost none of
their energy, however much they may have quieted
their manners. " Nil admirari" is the perfection
of good breeding in England, and a real gentleman
would sooner cheat in a horse trade than express
sympathy for the millions who are pining with
hunger and nakedness in the fields and factories
and mines of old England.

We should do gross injustice to our own fellow
countrymen if we failed to notice a little " Love
Eeast " that occurred a few days ago in St. Louis.
The killed and wounded would have been a trifle

THE MORALS OF FREE SOCIETY. 199

in Paris, but did pretty well for new beginners. It
was a genteel and select affair, for not a negro
was permitted to fraternise. Generally, these af-
fairs are decidedly vulgar in America, in conse-
quence of the great love of the Northern folk for
the negroes. In Philadelphia and Cincinnati, some
little Love Feasts have been enacted for the benefit
of our black brethren, who, when the feasts were
over, found themselves stript of clothes and trow-
sers — sans eyes, sans ears, sans teeth, sans every
thing. These, and other striking evidences of
brotherly interest, such as brick-bats and glass
bottles, leave Sambo no room to doubt that he is
a peculiar favorite, — yet Sambo, who is a quiet
body, is getting heartily tired of such rough romp-
ing and hard love-licks.

Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, culminated
when the Goddess of Reason usurped the seat
and the sceptre of Deity, and sent forth her high
priests, Danton, Marat, St. Just and Robespierre,
"to deal damnation round the land!" The de-
monstration was then complete. Man without
government, without order, without subordination,
without religion, without slavery in its every form,
from the prison house, the straight jacket, the
army, the navy, serfdom, up to the slavery of
mere subjection to law, without all those restraints
which his peculiar wants and capacities required,
was the cruellest and wildest beast of the field.

200 THE MORALS OF FREE SOCIETY.

It proved that a state of nature was not a state
of liberty, for a state of liberty is a state of ex-
terminating warfare. It proved that neither re-
ligion nor morality could exist without enough of
government to enforce the performance of duty
on each member of society.

We have attempted, elsewhere, to show, that
there cannot be enough of such government
without domestic slavery, because, in its absence,
men are placed in competitive and antagonistic
positions toward each other. This separation of
interest and antagonism begets continual rivalry,
hatred, and intense discord and war, which politi-
cal economy exasperates and increases, by en-
couraging exclusive devotion to men's self-interest.
A celebrated Socialist properly calls it " the phi-
losophy of self interest."

But political economy is the necessary result
of Free Society — it is the only moral code which
it can inculcate — and yet all its precepts are at
war with morality. But for Christianity, Free
Society would be a wilderness of crime; and
Christianity has not fair play and a proper field
of action, where government has failed to institute
the peace-begetting and protective influence of
domestic slavery. It is one of the necessary
parts of government, without which men become
enemies instead of brethren. There is no love
between equals, and the divine precept, " Love

THE MORALS OF FREE SOCIETY. ^201

thy neighbor as thyself," is thundered vainly in
the ears of men straining for the same object.

The maxim, "every man for himself," em-
braces the whole moral code of Free Society ;
and Miss Bremer, and all the other philanthropists
in the world, with their thousand schemes and
institutions, will never be able to neutralise the
immoral and death dealing tendency of that
maxim, and of the antagonism and social war
that it generates.

CHAPTER XXII.

SMALL NATIONALITIES.

Almost the only secret of high civilization and
national greatness consists in narrow and confined
territorial limits. Beget the necessity for the ex-
ercise of all the functions of government, all the
mechanic and artistic arts, for the cultivation of
all the sciences, and for the pursuit of all the avo-
cations of civilized life by a small population, and
intense enlightenment and universal education are
the immediate result. History, ancient and mod-
ern, teaches but one lesson on this subject. Little
Phoenicia and little Carthage, the hundred little
states of Greece, and Rome, whilst her dominion
was confined to Italy, were truly great. When
Alexander had conquered Egypt and Persia, and
died for want of other worlds to conquer, Greece
fell to rise no more, and in her fall involved the
conquered nations in one common ruin. Rome
conquered the world, and forthwith Cimmerian
darkness began to cover her empire. England,
under the Plantagenets, ere Scotland or Ireland
were annexed, crowned her King in Paris. Now,
whilst the beat of her drum circles the globe, she
trembles at the threat of French invasion.

SMALL NATIONALITIES. 203

Little Prussia, little Venice, little Holland, and
little Portugal, have each, in turn, controlled the
destines of Europe. Even little Sweden, under
Charles XII., whipped all the Russias till she
taught Peter how to fight. Overgrown nations,
like overgrown men, want energy, activity and
intelligence.

We should learn from these instances in history
to prize and guard State Rights. We should, as
far as consistent with the Constitution, make each
State independent of the rest of the world ; create
a necessity for the exercise of all the arts, scien-
ces, trades, professions and other pursuits that
pertain to separate nationality ; and endeavor to
counteract the centralizing tendency of modern
improvements in locomotion and intercommunica-
tion, which naturally rob the extremities to enrich
the centres of Power and of Trade. We live in
critical times, for the tendency to centralization is
stronger than ever before. Trade very easily ef-
fects now what conquest did formerly. Let the
States of the South look to this matter. Are they
willing to remain mere colonies and plantations for
the centres of trade, or will they preserve their
separate nationality ?

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE HIGHER LAW.

In framing and revising the institutions and
government of a nation, and in enacting its laws,
sensible and prudent statesmen study carefully the
will of God and designs of Providence, as revealed
in Holy Writ, or as gathered from history and ex-
perience. " Truth is mighty, and will prevail,"
and laws in contravention of the great truths de-
ducible from these sources, will become nugatory
and inefficient. Yet whilst the law is on the stat-
ute book, every citizen is bound to respect and
obey it, or else ta\e the consequences of trespass,
felony or treason. He may discuss the question,
" Does the law coincide with the ' Higher Law ' ? "
but he may not act on his conclusions if they be
against the law.

Does slavery violate the Higher Law ? Cer-
tainly not, if that Higher Law is to be found only
in the Bible. Certainly not, if you throw aside the
Bible, and infer what is right, proper, and natural,
from the course of nature, the lessons of history?
or the voice of experience. But consult the same
sources for your Higher Law, and as certainly is
free society a violation of the laws of Nature and
the revealed will of God.

CHAPTER XXIV.

INFIDELITY AND ABOLITIONISM.

Every one who reads the newspapers must have
observed that open-mouthed infidelity is never seen
or heard in this country except in abolition meet-
ings and conventions, and in women's rights con-
venticles. On such occasions some woman unsexes
herself, and with Gorgon head and Harpy tongue
pours out false and foul execrations against slavery
and the Bible, aided by men with sharper tongues
and duller courage than the women themselves.
To this there is a single exception. One pulpit in
Boston is on the Sabbath made a rostrum whence
an abolitionist fulminates contention and discord,
and stirs up to bloodshed and murder.

Liberty, infidelity, and abolition, are three
words conveying but one idea. Infidels who dis-
pute the authority of God will not respect or obey
the government of man. Abolitionists, who make
war upon slavery, instituted by God and approved
by Holy Writ, are in a fair way to denounce the
Bible that stands in the way of the attainment of
their purpose. Marriage is too much like slavery
not to be involved in its fate ; and the obedience
of wives which the Bible inculcates, furnishes a

206 INFIDELITY AND ABOLITIONISM.

new theine for infidelity in petticoats or in Bloom-
ers to harp on. Slavery, marriage, religion, are
the pillars of the social fabric. France felled them
at a blow, and Paris and St. Domingo were crushed
beneath the ruins of the edifice which they sup-
ported.

Frenchmen and Germans are generally infidels,
agrarians and abolitionists. An Irish infidel, an
Irish agrarian, or an Irish abolitionist, is scarcely
to be found. No Irish woman ever disgraces her,
own sex, or affects the dress and manners of the
opposite sex. The men of Erin are all brave, pa-
triotic and religious ; her women are

" Chaste as the icicle
That's curdled by the frost of purest snow,
And hangs on Dian's temple."

This intimate connexion and dependence, of
slavery, marriage and religion, we suggest as a
subject for the investigation and reflection of the
reader. If ever the abolitionists succeed in thor-
oughly imbuing the world with their doctrines and
opinions, all religion, all government, all order,
will be slowly but surely subverted and destroyed.
Society can linger on for centuries without slavery ;
it cannot exist a day without religion. As an
institution of government, religion is strictly within
the scope of our work, and as such we treat of it.

For fear assaults upon us may weaken the force
of our facts and arguments, we will take occasion

INFIDELITY AND ABOLITIONISM. 207

more strictly to define our opinions as to govern-
ment. We have ever, and still do belong to the
Democratic party ; — not, however, to the M let
alone " and "largest liberty" wing of that party.
We believe in the capacity of the people to govern,
and would not deny them the opportunity to exer-
cise that capacity. We think there is no danger
from too much or too popular government, provided
we avoid centralization, and distribute as much as
possible to small localities powers of police and
legislation. We would cherish and preserve all our
institutions as they are, adding to them probably
larger separate governmental powers to be vested
in the people of each county. The cause of pop-
ular government is on the advance. The printing
press, railroads, steamships and the telegraph
afford opportunities for information, consultation
and combination. But these agencies, which will
make governments more popular, will at the same
time render them more efficient, all-pervading, rigid
and exact. Ancient Republicanism will supplant
Laissez-faire Republicanism ;— ^-and ancient Repub-
licanism we admire and prefer. .

CHAPTER XXV.

KEVOLUTIONS AND REFOKMATIONS.

Reformations always do good, revolutions always
harm. All old institutions in time become in-
crusted with error and abuse, and frequent reforms
are required to keep them in good working order,
and to adapt them to the gradually changing cir-
cumstances of mankind. This is equally true of
religious institutions as of political ones, for there
is much in the machinery and external manifesta-
tions of the former, that is of mere human origin
and contrivance, — and everything human is liable
to imperfection and decay.

Total changes, which revolutions propose, are
never wise or practicable, because most of the insti-
tutions of every country are adapted to the man-
ners, morals and sentiments of the people. In-
deed, the people have been moulded in character
by those institutions, and they cannot be torn
asunder and others substituted, for none others will
fit. Hence reforms result in permanent change
and improvement. Revolutions, after a great waste
of blood and treasure, leave things to return soon
to the " status quo ante bellum." English states-
men, fully alive to these great truths, have for cen-

REVOLUTIONS AND REFORMATIONS. 209

turies past anticipated and prevented revolutions,
by granting timely reforms. Mr. Jefferson, when
we separated from Great Britain, wished to effect
a total revolution, " laying its foundations on such
principles, and organizing its powers in such forms,
as," &c. Fortunately for us, the practical men
who framed our government saw the wisdom and
necessity of adopting English institutions (to which
we had been accustomed), with very slight modifi-
cations, to adapt them to our circumstances. Our
separation from England was a great and salutary
reform, not a revolution. Scotland is now attempt-
ing a reform less in degree, but the same in char-
acter — she is trying to get back her parliament
and to establish a separate nationality. We have
no doubt it would redound to the strength and the
glory of Great Britain, if both Scotland and Ire-
land had separate parliaments.

CHAPTER XXVI.

THE SLAVE TRADE.

From several quarters propositions have of late
been made for the revival of the African slave
trade. The South has generally been opposed to
this trade, the North favorable to it. Such is
likely to be the case again ; for the North would
make much money by conducting the trade ; the
settled states of the South lose much by the de-
preciation of their negroes. The extreme inhu-
manity of this trade is enough to condemn it, but
men's interests blind their eyes and steel their
hearts against considerations of humanity. Be-
sides, the argument will be most successfully em-
ployed in its behalf, that it will but take the place
of another kind of slave trade, that is still more in-
human. The importation of apprentices or tempo-
rary slaves is now actively conducted by England
from Africa and various parts of Asia. These
apprentices, if not worked to death before their
terms of service expire, are left to starve after-
wards, and new ones imported in their place. They
are treated with less humanity than slaves, because
the master has little interest in their lives. Vastly
larger numbers must be imported to supply the

THE SLAVE TRADE. 211

demand for labor, because their children are not
slaves, and they themselves but for a time. After
liberation they will become a nuisance to the coun-
try that imports them.

The fact that, despite of the enormous annual
importation of slaves to Cuba, the number of
whites is greater than that of blacks in that island,
proves clearly enough that where it is cheaper to
buy African slaves than to rear them, men will
work these poor natives to death, regardless of
humanity. Besides, the natural antipathy between
the savage and the civilized man, not only prevents
the influence of domestic affection on the heart of
the master, but indurates his feelings and degrades
his morals. Our slaves are treated far better than
they were forty years ago, because they have im-
proved in mind and morals, approached nearer to
the master's state of civilization, and thus elicited
more of his interest and attachment. Slavery with
us is becoming milder every day ; were the slave
trade revived, it would resume its pristine cruelty.
The slaves we now hold would become less valuable,
and we should take less care of them. In justice
to them let us protest against the renewal of this
infamous traffic. Slavery originating from the
conquest of a country is beneficent even in its
origin, for it preserves the slaves or serfs who are
parcelled out to the conquering chiefs from the
waste, pillage, cruelty and oppression of the com-

212 THE SLAVE TRADE.

mon soldiers of the conquering army, — but slavery
brought about by hunting and catching Africans
like beasts, and then exposing them to the horrors
of the middle passage, is quite a different thing.

We think it would be both wise and humane to
subject the free negroes in America to some mod-
ification of slavery. Competition with the whites
is killing them out. They are neither so moral, so
happy, nor half so well provided as the slaves. Let
them select their masters, and this would be an-
other instance of slavery originating without vio-
lence or cruelty — another instance in which slavery
would redress much greater evils than it occa-
sioned.

CHAPTER XXVII.

woman's rights.

Slender. — I came yonder at Eton to marry mistress Anne Page,
and she's a great lubberly boy. If it had not been i' the church, I
would have swinged him, or he should have swinged me. If I
did not think it had been Anne Page, would I might never stir,
and 'tis a post-master's boy. — Merry Wives of Windsor.

Nothing in the signs of the times exhibits in
stronger relief the fact, that free society is in a
state "of dissolution and thaw," of demoraliza-
tion and transition, than the stir about woman's
rights. And jet it is time to work. Northern
newspapers are filled with the sufferings of poor
widowed needlewomen, and the murders of wives
by their husbands. Woman there is in a false
position. Be she white, or be she black, she is
treated with kindness and humanity in the slave-
holding South. In Asia, she ever has been and is
now an idol, secluded from the vulgar gaze, and
exempted from the hard and coarse labors of man.
The Turks and the Chinese imprison her, but
worship her. Her veiled face and cramped feet,
unfit her for work, condemn her to seclusion, but
secure to her protection. She is a slave, but is
idle, honored and caressed. The Romans girded

214 woman's rights.

up the toga, when about to engage in labor. If
American women wish to participate in the hard
labor of men, they are right to curtail the petti-
coat. Queens wear the longest trains, because
they have least occasion to labor. The broom
girls of Bavaria have to work hard for a living,
and find it necessary to amputate the nether im-
pediments. In France, woman draws the plough
and the canal boat. She will be condemned to
like labors in America, so soon as her dress, her
education and coarse sentiments fit her for such
labors. Let her exhibit strength and hardihood,
and man, her master, will make her a beast of
burden. So long as she is nervous, fickle, capri-
cious, delicate, diffident and dependent, man will
worship and adore her. Her weakness is her
strength, and her true art is to cultivate and im-
prove that weakness. Woman naturally shrinks
from public gaze, and from the struggle and com-
petition of life. Free society has thrown her into
the arena of industrial war, robbed her of the
softness of her own sex, without conferring on
her the strength of ours. In truth, woman, like
children, has but one right, and that is the right
to protection. The right to protection involves
the obligation to obey. A husband, a lord and
master, whom she should love, honor and obey,
nature designed for every woman, — for the num-
ber of males and females is the same. If she be

woman's rights. 215

obedient, she is in little danger of inal-treatment ;
if she stands upon her rights, is coarse and mas-
culine, man loathes and despises her, and ends by
abusing her. Law, however well intended, can
do little in her behalf. True womanly art will
give her an empire and a sway far greater than
she deserves. The best women have been dis-
tasteful to men, and unpopular with their own sex,
simply for betraying, or seeming to betray, some-
thing masculine in their characters. Catherine
Parr, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs. Fry, Miss Martineau,
and Madame De Stael, are not loveable charac-
ters. On the other hand, men have adored the
worst women, merely for their feminine charms
and arts. Rhodope and Aspasia, Delilah, Cleo-
patra, Mary Stuart, Ninon D'Enclos, Maria Antoi-
nette, Herodias and Lola Montez, ruled men as
they pleased, by the exercise of all the charms,
and more than the wiles and weakness of their
sex. Mrs. Stowe, in the characters of Aunt
Phebe and Mrs. St. Clair, beautifully illustrates
and enforces this idea. Bad as Mrs. St. Clair is,
we feel that we might love her, but good Aunt
Phebe is a she-man, continually boring and el-
bowing us with her rectangular virtues. Yet Mrs.
Stowe would have women preach. If she sets
them to preaching to-day, we men will put them
to the plough to-morrow. Women would do well

216 woman's eights.

to disguise strength of mind or body, if they
possess it, if they would retain their empire.

The people of our Northern States, who hold
that domestic slavery is unjust and iniquitous, are
consistent in their attempts to modify or abolish
the marriage relation. Marriages, in many places
there, are contracted with as little formality as
jumping over a broom, and are dissolved with equal
facility by courts and legislatures. It is pro-
posed by many to grant divorces at all times, when
the parties mutually consent. The Socialists
suggest that the relation should be abolished, pri-
vate family establishments broken up, and women
and children converted into joint stock. The
ladies are promoting these movements by women's
right's conventions. The prospects of these agi-
tators are quite hopeful, because they have no
conservative South to oppose them. It is their
own affair, and we will not interfere with its re-
gulation.

We shall deplore the day when marriage and
Christianity are abolished anywhere, but will not
interfere in the social and domestic matters of
other people.

The men of the South take care of the women
of the South, the men of slaveholding Asia
guard and protect their women too. The gener-
ous sentiments of slaveholders are sufficient guar-
antee of the rights of woman, all the world over.

woman's rights. 217

But there is something wrong in her condition
in free society, and that condition is daily be-
coming worse.

Give us woman with all her frailties and infirm-
ities, varium et mutabalile semper.

" Like the uncertain glory of an April day
Which now shows all the beauty of sun,
And bye and bye a cloud takes all away I"

We like not that —

Beauty, forever unchangingly bright,

* Like the long sunny lapse of a summer's day light,
Shining on, shining on, by no shadow made tender,
Till love falls asleep' in its sameness of splendor."

We would infinitely prefer to nurse a sickly
woman, to being led about by a masculine blue
stocking. Mrs. Boswell complained that her hus-
band, following Dr. Johnson, resembled a man led
about by a bear. We would rather be led by a
bear than a woman. He looks more formidable
and master-like.

To the husbands of pedantic, masculine women,
the lines of Byron may be well applied —

u But oh ! ye Lords of ladies intellectual,

Inform us truly, have they not hen-pecked you all."

As we are in the poetic vein, and this chapter
is intended solely for the eyes of the ladies, all
of whom love poetry, (though none of them can

K

218 W©MA»'S RIGHTS.

write it,) we will quote a whole ode of Schiller,
which expresses our thoughts on this subject far
better than we can express them ourselves. Poe-
try and painting require boldness, originality and
inventiveness. The ladies are too modest to prac-
tise these qualities, and only become coarse when
they attempt to be bold. Sappho is an exception,
but Sappho, we suspect, was a Myth or a man.
We offer this beautiful ode to the ladies as a pro-
pitiation for all the wicked things we have said

about them:

»

HONOR TO WOMAN.

Honor to Woman ! To her it is given

To guard the earth with the roses of heaven !

All blessed, she linketh the Loves in their choir;
In the veil of the Graces her beauty concealing,
She tends on each altar that's hallowed to Feeling

And keeps ever living the fire !

From the bounds of truth careering,

Man's strong spirit wildly sweeps,
With each hasty impulse veering

Down to Passion's troubled deeps.
And his heart contented never,

Goads to grapple with the far,
Chasing his own dream forever,

On through many a distant star !

But Woman, with looks that can charm and enchair,,
Lureth back at her beck the wild truant again,

By the spell of her presence beguiled ;
In the home of the mother, her modest abode,
And modest the manners by Nature bestowed

On Nature's most exquisite child 1

woman's rights. 219

Bruised and worn, but fiercely breasting,

Foe to foe, the angry strife;
Man, the wild one, never resting,

Braves along the troubled life ;
What he plannetb, still pursuing ;

Vainly as the hydra bleeds.
Crest the severed crest renewing —

Wish to withered wish succeeds.

But woman, at pea.ce with all being, reposes,
And seeks from the moment to gather the roses,

Whose sweets to her culture belong.
Ah ! richer than he, though his soul reigneth o'er
The mighty dominion of Genius and Love,

And the infinite Circle of Song.

Strong and proud and self- depending,

Man's cold bosom beats alone;
Heart with heart divinely blending

In the love that gods have known,
Soul's sweet interchange of feeling.

Melting tears — he never knows.
Each hard sense, the hard one steeling,

Arms against a world of foes.

Alive, as the wind harp, how lightly soever
If woo'd by the Zephyr, to music will quiver,

Is woman to Hope and to Fear ;
Ah ! tender one ! still at the shadow of grieving,
How quiver the chords — how thy bosom is heaving —

How trembles thy glance through the tear !

Man's dominion, war and labor:

Might to right the statute gave ;
Laws are in the Scythian'.- sabre ;

Where the Mede reign'd — see the slave !
Peace and meekness grimly routing,

Prowl's the War-lust, rude and wild ;
Eris rages, hoarsely shouting,

Where the vanished Graces smiled.

220 woman's rights.

But Woman, the Soft One, persuasively prayeth,

Of the life that she charnieth, the sceptre she swayeth ;

She lulls, as she looks from above,
The Discord whose hell for its victims is gaping,
And blending awhile, then forever escaping,

Whispers Hate to the image of Love!

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE SUMMING UP.

" Why, my dear Lucifer, would you abuse
My call for witnesses ? I did not mean
That you should half of earth, and hell produce ;
'Tis even superfluous, since two honest, clean,
True testimonies are enough : We live
Our time, nay, our eternity, between
The accusation and defence : if we
Hear both, 'twill stretch our immortality."

The Vision of Judgment.

We did not intend to write the history of
slavery, or to treat of it in all its aspects. It has
been so interwoven with all the relations and his-
tory of human kind, that to do so would require a
Moral Cosmos and a history of the world. Our
chief object has been to prove the failure of free
society. We knew if we succeeded in that, the
various theories propounded in this work on other
subjects would be found, when closely examined,
necessary results, or legitimate sequences.

In order to enable the reader fully to compre-
hend our argument, and to furnish a fair field for
its refutation, if false, we will now sum up the
chief points which we have made, and on which
we rely.

222 THE SUMMING UP.

First. Free society is theoretically impracti-
cable, because its friends admit that " in all old
countries the supply of labor exceeds the demand."
Hence a part of the laboring class must be out of
employment and starving, and in their struggle to
get employment, reducing those next above them
to the minimum that will support human existence.

Secondly. The late invention and use of the
word Sociology in free society, and of the science
of which it treats, and the absence of such word
and science in slave society, shows that the former
is afflicted with disease, the latter healthy.

Thirdly. We prove the failure, from history
and statistics.

Fourthly. We prove it from the exodus now
going on from Western Europe with all the reck-
less panic and trepidation of a " Sauve que peut ! "

And, lastly, we prove it from the universal ad-
mission of all writers who have of late years
treated of the subject of society in Free Europe.

For thirty years the South has been a field on
which abolitionists, foreign and domestic, have
carried on offensive warfare. Let us now, in turn,
act on the offensive, transfer the seat of war, and
invade the enemy's territory.

APPENDIX

2X9

APPENDIX.

Our little work has by untoward circumstances
been delayed in its publication. Ten years ago we
became satisfied that slavery, black or white, was
right and necessary. We advocated this doctrine
in very many essays ; sometimes editorially and
sometimes as a communicant. The Fredericksburg
Recorder and Richmond Examiner will testify to
this fact. We republish in this Appendix a series
of essays that first appeared in the Democratic
Recorder, of Fredericksburg, in 1849, 1850, and
1851.

Few papers in the Union then had the stern
courage and integrity to admit such articles into
their columns. We then published them in pam-
phlet form, for a few friends. We now re-publish
them, because, whatever " bad eminence " we may
attain from being the first to write the Justification
and Philosophy of Slavery, we prefer that position
to being considered the mere follower in the wake
of evil doers. We believe we are morally and
religiously right. We know that if wrong, we can
be easilv confuted.

SLAVERY JUSTIFIED.

LIBERTY AND EQUALITY SOCIALISM — YOUNG ENG-
LAND DOMESTIC SLAVERY.

Liberty and equality are new things under the sun.
The free states of antiquity abounded with slaves.
The feudal system that supplanted Roman institutions
changed the form of slavery, but brought with it neither
liberty nor equality. France and the Northern States of
our Union have alone fully and fairly tried the experi-
ment of a social organization founded upon universal
liberty and equality of rights. England has only ap-
proximated to this condition in her commercial and
manufacturing cities. The examples of small commu-
nities in Europe are not fit exponents of the working of
the system. In France and in our Northern States the
experiment has already failed, if we are to form our
opinions from the discontent of the masses, or to believe
the evidence of the Socialists, Communists, Anti-Renters,
and a thousand other agrarian sects that have arisen
in these countries, and threaten to subvert the whole so-
cial fabric. The leaders of these sects, at least in France,
comprise within their ranks the greater number of the
most cultivated and profound minds in the nation, who
have made government their study. Add to the evidence
of these social philosophers, who, watching closely the
working of the system, have proclaimed to the world its
total failure, the condition of the working classes, and we

APPENDIX. 227

have conclusive proof that liberty and equality have not
conduced to enhance the comfort or the happiness of the
people. Crime and pauperism have increased. Riots,
trades unions, strikes for higher wages, discontent break-
ing out into revolution, are things of daily occurrence,
and show that the poor see and feel quite as clearly as the
philosophers, that their condition is far worse under the
new than under the old order of things. Radicalism
and Chartism in England owe their birth to the free and
equal institutions of her commercial and manufacturing
districts, and are little heard of in the quiet farming dis-
tricts, where remnants of feudalism still exist in the rela-
tion of landlord and tenant, and in the laws of entail
and primogeniture.

So much for experiment. We will now endeavor to
treat the subject theoretically, and to show that the sys-
tem is on its face self-destructive and impracticable.
When we look to the vegetable, animal and human
kingdoms, we discover in them all a constant conflict,
war, or race of competition, the result of which is, that '
the weaker or less healthy genera, species and individ-
uals are continually displaced and exterminated by the
stronger and more hardy. It is a means by which some
contend Nature is perfecting her own work. We, how-
ever, witness the war, but do not see the improvement.
Although from the earliest date of recorded history, one
race of plants has been eating out and taking the place
of another, the stronger or more cunning animals been «
destroying the feebler, and man exterminating and sup-
planting his fellow, still the plants, the animals and the
men of to-day seem not at all superior, even in those

228 APPENDIX.

qualities of strength and hardihood to which they owe
their continued existence, to those of thousands of years
ago. To this propensity of the strong to oppress and
destroy the weak, government owes its existence. So
strong is this propensity, and so destructive to human
existence, that man has never yet been found so savage
as to be without government. Forgetful of this impor-
tant fact, which is the origin of all governments, the
political economists and the advocates of liberty and
equality propose to enhance the well being of man by
trammeling his conduct as little as possible, and encour-
aging what they call Free Competition. Now, free
competition is but another name for liberty and equality,
and we must acquire precise and accurate notions about
it in order to ascertain how free institutions will work.
It is, then, that war or conflict to which Nature impels
her creatures, and which government was intended to
restrict. It is true, it is that war somewhat modified and
restricted, for the warmest friends of freedom would
have some government. The question is, whether the
proposed restrictions are sufficient to neutralize the self-
destructive tendencies which nature impresses on society.
We proceed to show that the war of the wits, of mind
with mind, which free competition or liberty and equality
beget and encourage, is quite as oppressive, cruel and ex-
terminating, as the war of the sword, of theft, robbery,
and murder, which it forbids. It is only substituting
strength of mind for strength of body. Men are told
it is their ■ duty to compete, to endeavor to get ahead
of and supplant their fellow men, by the exercise of
all the intellectual and moral strength with which

APPENDIX. 229

nature and education have endowed them. " Might
makes right/' is the order of creatiou, and this law of
nature, so far as mental might is concerned, is restored
by liberty to man. The struggle to better one's condi-
tion, to pull others down or supplant them, is the great
organic law of free society. All men being equal, all
aspire to the highest honors and the largest posses-
sions. Good men and bad men teach their children one
and the same lesson — " Go ahead, push your way in the
world." In such society, virtue, if virtue there be, loses
all her loveliness because of her selfish aims. Xone but
the selfish virtues are encouraged, because none other
aid a man in the race of free competition. Good men
and bad men have the same end in view, are in pursuit
of the same object — self-promotion, self-elevation. The
good man is prudent, cautious, and cunning of fence ;
he knows well the arts (the virtues, if you please,)
which will advance his fortunes and enable him to de-
press and supplant others ; he bides his time, takes ad-
vantage of the follies, the improvidence, and vices of
others, and makes his fortune out of the misfortunes of
his fellow men. The bad man is rash, hasty, and un-
skillful. He is equally selfish, but not half so cunning.
Selfishness is almost the only motive of human conduct
with good and bad in free society, where every man is
taught that he may change and better his condition. A
vulgar adage, u Every man for himself, and devil take
the hindmost," is the moral which liberty and free
competition inculcate. Now, there are no more honors
and wealth in proportion to numbers, in this generation,
than in the one which preceded it ; population fully

230 APPENDIX.

keeps pace with the means of subsistence ; hence, these
who better their condition or rise to higher places in so-
ciety, do so generally by pulling down others or pushing
them from their places. Where men of strong minds,
of strong wills, and of great self-control, come into free
competition with the weak and improvident, the latter
soon become the inmates of jails and penitentiaries.

The statistics .of France, England and America show
that pauperism and crime advance pari passu with lib-
erty and equality. How can it be otherwise, when all
society is combined to oppress the poor and weak mind-
ed ? The rich man, however good he may be, employs
the laborer who will work for the least wages. If
he be a good man, his punctuality enables him to
cheapen the wages of the poor man. The poor war
with one another in the race of competition, in order
to get employment, by underbidding ; for laborers are
more abundant than employers. Population increases
faster than capital. Look to the situation of woman
when she is thrown into this war of competition, and has
to support herself by her daily wages. For the same or
equally valuable services she gets not half the pay that
man does, simply because the modesty of her sex pre-
vents her from resorting to all the arts and means of
competition which men employ. He who would eman-
cipate woman, unless he could make her as coarse and
strong in mind and body as man, would be her worst en-
emy j her subservience to and dependence on man, is ne-
cessary to her very existence. She is not a soldier fitted
to enlist in the war of free competition. We do not set
children and women free because they are not capable of

APPEXDIX. 231

taking care of themselves, not equal to the constant
struggle of society. To set theui free would be to give
the lamb to the wolf to take care of. Society would
quickly devour them. If the children of ten years of
age were remitted to ail the rights of person and property
which men enjoy, all can perceive how soon ruin and
penury would overtake them. But half of mankind are
but grown-up children, and liberty is as fatal to them as
it would be to children.

We will cite another familiar instance to prove and
illustrate the destructive effects of liberty or free compe-
tition. It is that where two races of men of different
capacity are brought into juxtaposition. It is the boast
of the Anglo-Saxon, that by the arts of peace under the
influence of free trade he can march to universal con-
quest. However true this may be, all know that if Eng-
lishmen or Americans settle among inferior races, they
soon become the owners of the soil, and gradually extir-
pate or reduce to poverty the original owners. They are
the wire-grass of nations. The same law of nature
which enables and impels the stronger race to oppress
and exterminate the weaker, is constantly at work in the
bosom of every society, between its stronger and weaker
members. Liberty and equality rather encourage than
restrict this law in its deadly operation. A Northern
gentleman, who was both statesman and philosopher,
once told us, that his only objection to domestic slavery
was, that it would perpetuate an inferior race, who, under
the influence of free trade and free competition, would
otherwise disappear from the earth. China and Japan

232 APPENDIX.

acted wisely to anticipate this new philosophy and ex-
clude Europeans.*

One step more, and that the most difficult in this pro-
cess of reasoning and illustration, and we have done with
this part of our subject. Liberty and equality throw
the whole weight of society on its weakest members ;
they combine all men in oppressing precisely that part of
mankind who most need sympathy, aid and protection.
The very astute and avaricious man, when left free to
exercise his faculties, is injured by no one in the field of
competition, but levies a tax on all with whom he deals.
The sensible and prudent, but less astute man, is seldom
worsted in competing with his fellow men, and generally
benefited. The very simple and improvident man is the
prey of every body. The simple man represents a class,
the common day laborers. The employer cheapens their
wages, and the retail dealer takes advantage of their igno-
rance, their inability to visit other markets, and their
want of credit, to charge them enormous profits. They
bear the whole weight of society on their shoulders ;
they are the producers and artificers of all the necessa-
ries, the comforts, the luxuries, the pomp and splendor
of the world ; they create it all, and enjoy none of it ;
they are the muzzled ox that treadeth out the straw ;
they are at constant war with those above them, asking
higher wages but getting lower ; for they are also at war
with each other, underbidding to get employment. This
process of underbidding never ceases so long as employ-

* But free trade has conquered. Chinese are shipped off as
slaves, and Japan tremhles as she hears the knocking at her door.

APPENDIX. 233

ers want profits or laborers want employment. It ends
when wages are reduced too low to afford subsistence, in
filling poor-houses, and jails, and graves. It has reached
that point already in France, England and Ireland. A
half million died of hunger in one year in Ireland —
they died because in the eye of the law they were the
equals, and liberty had made them the enemies, of their
landlords and employers. Had they been vassals or
serfs, they would have been beloved, cherished and taken
care of by those same landlords and employers. Slaves
never die of hunger, scarcely ever feel want.

The bestowing upon men equality of rights, is but
giving license to the strong to oppress the weak. It be-
gets the grossest inequalities of condition. Menials and
day laborers are and must be as numerous as in a land of
slavery. And these menials and laborers are only taken
care of while young, strong and healthy. If the la-
borer gets sick, his wages cease just as his demands are
greatest. If two of the poor get married 3 who being
young and healthy, are getting good wages, in a few
years they may have four children. Their wants have
increased, but the mother has enough to do to nurse the
four children, and the wages of the husband must sup-
port six. There is no equality, except in theory, in such
society, and there is no liberty. The men of property,
those who own lands and money, are masters of the poor;
masters, with none of the feelings, interests or sympa-
thies of masters ; they employ them when they please,
and for what they please, and may leave them to die in
the highway, for it is the only home to which the poor in
free countries are entitled. They (the property holders)

234 APPENDIX.

beheaded Charles Stuart and Louis Capet, because these
kings asserted a divine right to govern wrong, and forgot
that office was a trust to be exercised for the benefit of
the governed ; and yet they seem to think that property
is of divine right, and that they may abuse its possession
to the detriment of the rest of society, as much as they
please. A pretty exchange the world would make, to
get rid of kings who often love and protect the poor, and
get in their place a million of pelting, petty officers in
the garb of money-changers and land-owners, who think
that as they own all the property, the rest of mankind
have no right to a living, except on the conditions they
may prescribe. " 'Tis bettter to fall before the lion than
the wolf," and modern liberty has substituted a thousand
wolves for a few lions. The vulgar landlords, capitalists
and employers of to-day, have the liberties and lives of
the people more completely in their hands, than had the
kings, barons and gentlemen of former times ; and they
hate and oppress the people as cordially as the people
despise them. But these vulgar parvenus, these psalm-
singing regicides, these worshipers of mammon, " have
but taught bloody instructions, which being taught, re-
turn to plague the inventor." The king's office was a
trust, so are your lands, houses and money. Society per.
mits you to hold them, because private property well
administered conduces to the good of all society. This
is your only title ; you lose your right to your property,
as the king did to his crown, so soon as you cease faith-
fully to execute your trust ; you can't make commons
and forests of your lands and starve mankind ; you must
manage your lands to produce the most food and raiment

APPENDIX. 235

for mankind, or you forfeit your title ; you may not un-
derstand this philosophy, but you feel that it is true, and
are trembling in your seats as you hear the murmurings
and threats of the starving poor.

The moral effect of free society is to banish Christian
virtue, that virtue which bids us love our neighbor as
ourself, and to substitute the very equivocal virtues pro-
ceeding from mere selfishness. The intense struggle to
better each one's pecuniary condition, the rivalries, the
jealousies, the hostilities which it begets, leave neither
time nor inclination to cultivate the heart or the head.
Every finer feeling of our nature is chilled and benumbed
by its selfish atmosphere ; affection is under the ban,
because affection makes us less regardful of mere self;
hospitality is considered criminal waste, chivalry a stum-
bling-block, and the code of honor foolishness ; taste,
sentiment, imagination, are forbidden ground, because
no money is to be made by them. Gorgeous pageantry
and sensual luxury are the only pleasures indulged in,
because they alone are understood and appreciated, and
they are appreciated just for what they cost in dollars
and cents. What makes money, and what costs money,
are alone desired. Temperance, frugality, thrift, atten-
tion to business, industry, and skill in making bargains)
are virtues in high repute, because they enable us to sup-
plant others and increase our own wealth. The charac-
ter of our Northern brethren, and of the Dutch, is proof
enough of the justice of these reflections. The Puritan
fathers had lived in Holland, and probably imported
Norway rats and Dutch morality in the Mayflower.

236 APPENDIX.

Liberty and equality are not only destructive to the
morals, but to the happiness of society. Foreigners have
all remarked on the care-worn, thoughtful, unhappy
countenances of our people, and the remark only applies
to the North, for travellers see little of us at the South,
who live far from highways and cities, in contentment on
our farms.

The facility with which men may improve their con-
dition would, indeed, be a consideration much in favor of
free society, if it did not involve as a necessary conse-
quence the equal facility and liability to lose grade and
fortune. As many fall as rise. The wealth of society
hardly keeps pace with its numbers. All cannot be
rich. The rich and the poor change places oftener than
where there are fixed hereditary distinctions ; so often,
that the sense of insecurity makes every one unhappy j
so often, that we see men clutching at security through
means of Odd Fellows, Temperance Societies, &c, which
provide for members when sick, and for the families of
deceased members ; so often, that almost every State in
the Union has of late years enacted laws or countenanced
decisions giving more permanency to property. Entails
and primogeniture are as odious to us as kings were to the
Romans ; but their object — to keep property in our fami-
lies — is as dear to us as to any people on earth, because
we love our families as much. Hence laws to exempt
small amounts of personal property from liability to debt
are daily enacted, and hence Iowa or Wisconsin has a
provision in her constitution, that the homestead of some
forty acres shall be exempt from execution. Hence,
also, the mighty impulse of late in favor of woman's

APPENDIX. 237

rights. Legislatures and courts are yieing with each
other which shall do most to secure married women's
rights to them. The ruin of thousands upon thousands
of families in the revulsion of 1837, taught the necessity
of this new species of entail, this new way of keeping
property in the family. The ups and downs of life be-
came too rapid to be agreeable to any who had property
to lose or a family to provide for. We have not yet
quite cooled down from the fervor of the Ke volution.
We have been looking to one side only of our institu-
tions. We begin to feel, however, that there is another
and a dark side, — a side where all are seen going down
the hill of fortune. Let us look closely and fearlessly at
this feature of free society, so much lauded and so little
understood. What object more laudable, what so dear
to a man's heart, as to continue a competency of prop-
erty, refinement of mind and morals, to his posterity ?
What nobler incentive to virtuous conduct, than the be-
lief that such conduct will redound to the advantage of
our descendants ? What reflection so calculated to make
men reckless, wretched and immoral, as the conviction
that the means ihey employ to improve the moral, men-
tal and pecuniary condition of their offspring, are, in
this land of ups and downs, the very means to make
them the prey of the cunning, avaricious and unprin-
cipled, who have been taught in the school of adversity
and poverty ? We constantly boast that the wealthy and
powerful of to-day are the sons of the weak, ignorant
and destitute of yesterday. It is the other side of the
picture that we want moral courage to look at. We are
dealing now with figures of arithmetic, not of rhetoric.

238 APPENDIX.

Those who rise, pull down a class as numerous, and often
more worthy than themselves, to the abyss of misery and
penury. Painful as it may be, the reader shall look with
us at this dark side of the picture j he shall view the
vanquished as well as the victors on this battle-ground
of competition ; he shall see those who were delicately
reared, taught no tricks of trade, no shifts of thrifty ava-
rice, spurned, insulted, down-trodden by the coarse and
vulgar, whose wits and whose appetites had been sharp-
ened by necessity. If he can sympathize with fallen
virtue or detest successful vice, he will see nothing in
this picture to admire.

The wide fields of the newly rich will cease to excite
pleasure in the contemplation ; they will look like G-ol-
gothas covered with human bones. Their coarse and
boisterous joys, while they revel in their spoils, will not
help to relieve the painful sympathies for their victims.

But these parvenus are men with all the feelings of
men, though somewhat blunted by the race for wealth ;
they love their children, and would have them unlike
themselves, moral, refined, and educated — above the ne-
cessities and tricks of their parents. They rear them as
gentlemen, to become the victims in their turn of the
children of fallen gentlemen of a past generation — these
latter having learned in the school of adversity the path
to fortune. In Heaven's name, what is human life worth
with such prospects ahead ? Who would not rather lie
down and die than exert himself to educate and make
fortunes for his children, when he has reason to fear that
by so doing he is to heap coals of fire on their heads.
And yet this is an exact picture of the prospect which

APPENDIX. 239

universal liberty holds out to its votaries. It is true it
hides with a veil the agonies of the vanquished, and
only exhibits the vulgar mirth of the victors. We have
lifted the veil.

In Boston, a city filmed for its wealth and the pru-
dence of its inhabitants, nine-tenths of the men in busi-
ness fail. In the slaveholding South, except in new set-
tlements, failures are extremely rare; small properties
descend from generation to generation in the same fam-
ily ; there is as much stability and permanency of prop-
erty as is compatible with energy and activity in society ;
fortunes are made rather by virtuous industry than by
tricks, cunning and speculation.

We have thus attempted to prove from theory and
from actual experiment, that a society of universal lib-
erty and equality is absurd and impracticable. We have
performed our task, we know, indifferently, but hope we
have furnished suggestions that may be profitably used
by those more accustomed to authorship.

We now come in the order of our subject to treat of
the various new sects of philosophers that have appeared
of late years in France and in our free States, who, dis-
gusted with society as it exists, propose to re-organize it
on entirely new principles. We have never heard of a
convert to any of these theories in the slave States. If
we are not all contented, still none see evils of such mag-
nitude in society as to require its entire subversion and
reconstruction/ We shall group all these sects together,
because they all concur in the great truth that Free Com-
petition is the bane of free society ; they all concur, too,
in modifying or wholly destroying the institution of pri-

210 APPENDIX.

vate property. Many of them, seeing that property en-
ables its owners to exercise a more grinding oppression
than kings ever did, would destroy its tenure altogether.
In France, especially, these sects are headed by men of
great ability, who saw the experiment of liberty and
equality fairly tested in France after the revolution of
1792. They saw, as all the world did, that it failed to
promote human happiness or well-being.

France found the Consulate and the Empire havens of
bliss compared with the stormy ocean of liberty and
equality on which she had been tossed. Wise, however,
as these Socialists and Communists of France are, they
cannot create a man, a tree, or a new system of society ;
these are God's works, which man may train, trim and
modify, but cannot create. The attempt to establish
government on purely theoretical abstract speculation,
regardless of circumstance and experience, has always
failed j never more signally than with the Socialists.

The frequent experience cf the Abbe Sieye's paper
structures of government, which lasted so short a time,
should have taught them caution ; but they were bolder
reformers than he ; they had a fair field for their experi-
ment after the expulsion of Louis Phillippe ; they tried
it, and their failure was complete and ridiculous. The
Abbe's structures were adamant compared to theirs.
The rule of the weak Louis Napoleon was welcomed as a
fortunate escape from their schemes of universal benevo-
lence, which issued in universal bankruptcy.

The sufferings of the Irish, and the complaints of the
Radicals and Chartists, have given birth to a new party
in England, called Young England. This party saw in

APPENDIX. 241

the estrangement and hostility of classes, and the suffer-
ings of the poor, the same evils of free competition that
had given rise to Socialism in France ; though less tal-
ented than the Socialists, they came much nearer discov-
ering the remedy for these evils.

Young England belongs to the most conservative wing
of the tory party ; he inculcates strict subordination of
rank j would have the employer kind, attentive and pa.
ternal, in his treatment of the operative. The operative,
humble, affectionate and obedient to his employer. He
is young, and sentimental, and would spread his doctrines
in tracts, sonnets and novels ; but society must be ruled
by sterner stuff than sentiment. Self-interest makes the
employer and free laborer enemies. The one prefers to
pay low wages, the other needs high wages. War, con-
stant war, is the result, in which the operative perishes,
but is not vanquished j he is hydra-headed, and when he
dies two take his place. But numbers diminish his
strength. The competition among laborers to get em.
ployment begets an intestine war, more destructive than
the war from above. There is but one remedy for this
evil, so inherent in free society, and that is, to identify
the interests of the weak and the strong, the poor and
the rich. Domestic Slavery does this far better than
any other institution. Feudalism only answered the
purpose in so far as Feudalism retained the features of
slavery. To it (slavery) Greece and Rome, Egypt and
Judea, and all the other distinguished States of antiqui-
ty, were indebted for their great prosperity and high
civilization j a prosperity and a civilization which appear
almost miraculous, when we look to their ignorance of

L

242 APPENDIX.

the physical sciences. In the moral sciences they were
our equals, in the fine arts vastly our superiors. Their
poetry, their painting, their sculpture, their drama, their
elocution, and their architecture, are models which we
imitate, but never equal. In the science of government
and of morals, in pure metaphysics, and in all the walks
of intellectual philosophy, we have been beating the air
with our wings or revolving in circles, but have not ad-
vanced an inch. Kant is not ahead of Aristotle — and
Juvenal has expressed in little more than a line the mod-
ern utilitarian morality —

Quis enim virtutem amplectitur ipsam
Proemia si tollas ?

Terence, himself a slave, with a heart no doubt filled
with the kindly affections which the relation of master
and slave begets, uttered the loftiest sentiment that ever
emanated from uninspired man :

Homo sum ; humani nihil a me alienum puto.*

But this high civilization and domestic slavery did not
merely co-exist, they were cause and effect. Every
scholar whose mind is at all imbued with ancient history
and literature, sees that G-reece and Rome were indebted
to this institution alone for the taste, the leisure and the
means to cultivate their heads and their hearts ; had they
been tied down to Yankee notions of thrift, they might
have produced a Franklin, with his " penny saved is a
penny gained ; " they might have had utilitarian philos-

* The line and a half from Juvenal expresses the philosophy and
morale of free society : that from Terence the moral of slave so-
ciety.

APPENDIX. 243

ophers and invented the spinning jenny, but they never
would have produced a poet, an orator, a sculptor or
an architect ; they would never have uttered a lofty
sentiment, achieved a glorious feat in war, or created a
single work of art.

A modern Yankee, or a Dutchman, is the fair result
of liberty and equality. French character has not yet
been subdued and tamed into insignificance by their
new institutions ; and besides, the pursuit of arms ele-
vates and purifies the sentiments of Frenchmen. In
what is the Yankee or Dutchman comparable to the
Roman, Athenian or Spartan ? In nothing save his
care of his pelf and his skill in driving a bargain.
The ruins of Thebes, of Nineveh, and of Balbec, the
obelisks and pyramids of Egypt, the lovely and time-
defying relics of Ptoman and Grecian art, the Doric
column and the Gothic spire, alike attest the taste, the
genius and the energy of society where slavery existed.

Quis locus,
Quoe regio in terris non nostri plena laboris?

And now Equality where are thy monuments ? And
Echo answers where ! Echo deep, deep, from the bow-
els of the earth, where women and children drag out
their lives in darkness, harnessed like horses to heavy
cars loaded with ore. Or, perhaps, it is an echo from
some grand, gloomy and monotonous factory, where pal-
lid children work fourteen hours a day, and go home at
night to sleep in damp cellars. It may be too, this cel-
lar contains aged parents too old to work, and cast off
by their employer to die. G-reat railroads and mighty
steamships too, thou mayest boast, but still the opera-

244 APPENDIX.

tives who construct tTiern are beings destined to poverty
and neglect. Not a vestige of art canst thou boast;
not a ray of genius illumes thy handiwork. The sordid
spirit of mammon presides o'er all, and from all pro"
ceed the sighs and groans of the oppressed.

Domestic slavery in the Southern States has pro-
duced the same results in elevating the character of the
master that it did in Greece and Rome. He is lofty
and independent in his sentiments, generous, affection-
ate, brave and eloquent; he is superior to the North-
erner in every thing but the arts of thrift. History
proves this. A Yankee sometimes gets hold of the
reins of State, attempts Apollo, but acts Phaeton.
Scipio and Aristides, Calhoun and Washington, are the
noble results of domestic slavery. Like Egyptian obe-
lisks 'raid the waste of time — simple, severe, sublime, —
they point ever heavenward, and lift the soul by their
examples. Adams and Yan Buren, cunning, complex
and tortuous, are fit exponents of the selfish system of
universal liberty.* Coriolanus, marching to the gates
of Rome with dire hate and deadly indignation, is
grand and noble in his revenge. Adams and Yan
Buren, insidiously striking with reptile fangs at the
South, excite in ail bosoms hatred and contempt;
but we will not indulge in sweeping denuncia-
tion. In public and in private life, the North
has many noble and generous souls. Men who,

*The North was pushing the Wiltot Proviso -when this was
written. "We wrote under angry excitement. We did Mr.
Van Buren injustice and the North injustice. We believe Mr.
Van Buren thoroughly patriotic, though wrong on the Proviso ;
and we think Northerners more fanatical than selfish.

APPENDIX. 245

like Webster and Cass, Dickinson and Winthrop,*
can soar in lofty eloquence beyond the narrow preju-
dices of time and place, see man in all his relations,
and contemn the narrow morality which makes the per-
formance of one duty the excuse for a thousand crimes.
"We speak only of the usual and common effects of
slavery and of equality. The Turk, half civilized as
he is, exhibits the manly, noble and generous traits of
character peculiar to the slave owner ; he is hospitable,
generous, truthful, brave, and strictly honest. In many
respects, he is the finest specimen of humanity to be
found in the world.

But the chief and far most important enquiry is,
how does slavery affect the condition of the slave ? One
of the wildest sects of Communists in France proposes
not only to hold all property in common, but to divide
the profits, not according to each man's in-put and la-
bor, but according to each man's wants. Now this is
precisely the system of domestic slavery with us. We
provide for each slave, in old age and in infancy, in
sickness and in health, not according to his labor, but
according to his wants. The master's wants are more
costly and refined, and he therefore gets a larger share
of the profits. A Southern farm is the beau ideal of
Communism; it is a joint concern, in which the slave
consumes more than the master, of the coarse products,
and is far happier, because although the concern may
fail, he is always sure of a support j he is only transfer-
red to another master to participate in the profits of

*We had not seen Mr. "Winthrop's late speech when this was
written.

246 APPENDIX.

another concern; he marries when he pleases, because
he knows he will have to work no more with a family
than without one, and whether he live or die, that family
will be taken care of; he exhibits all the pride of own-
ership, despises a partner in a smaller concern, "a
poor man's negro/' boasts of "our crops, horses,
fields and cattle ;" and is as happy as a human being
can be. And why should he not? — he enjoys as much
of the fruits of the farm as he is capable of doing, and
the wealthiest can do no more. Great wealth brings
many additional cares, but few additional enjoyments.
Our stomachs do not increase in capacity with our for-
tunes. We want no more clothing to keep us warm.
We may create new wants, but we cannot create new
pleasures. The intellectual enjoyments which wealth
affords are probably balanced by the new cares it brings
along with it.

There is no rivalry, no competition to get employment
among slaves, as among free laborers. Nor is there a
war between master and slave. The master's interest
prevents his reducing the slave's allowance or wages in
infancy or sickness, for he might lose the slave by so
doing. His feeling for his slave never permits him to
stint him in old age. The slaves are all well fed, well
clad, have plenty of fuel, and are happy. They have
no dread of the future — no fear of want. A state of
dependence is the only condition in which reciprocal
affection can exist among human beings — the only
situation in which the war of competition ceases, and
peace, amity and good will arise. A state of indepen-
dence always begets more or less of jealous rivalry and
hostility. A man loves his children because they are

APPEHMi^ir 247

weak ; helpless and dependenfrfp^pf Wyqb his wife for
similar reasons. When his chilWen grow up and as-
sert their independence, he is apt to transfer his affec-
tion to his grand-children. He ceases to love his wife
when she becomes masculine or rebellious; but slaves
are always dependent, never the rivals of their master.
Hence, though men are often found at variance with
wife or children, we never saw one who did not like his
slaves, and rarely a slave who was not devoted to his
master. " I am thy servant V disarms me of the
power of master. Every man feels the beauty, force
and truth of this sentiment of Sterne. But he who
acknowledges its truth, tacitly admits that dependence
is a tie of aifection, that the relation of master and
slave is one of mutual good will. Volumes written on
the subject would not prove as much as this single sen-
timent. It has found its way to the heart of every
reader, and carried conviction along with it. The slave-
holder is like other men ; he will not tread on the worm
nor break the bruised reed. The ready submission of
the slave, nine times out of ten, disarms his wrath even
when the slave has offended. The habit of command
may make him imperious and fit him for rule ; but he
is only imperious when thwarted or crossed by his
equals ; he would scorn to put on airs of command
among blacks, whether slaves or free j he always speaks
to them in a kind and subdued tone. We go farther,
and say the slave-holder is better than others — because
he has greater occasion for the exercise of the affec-
tions. His whole life is spent in providing for the
minutest wants of others, in taking care of them in sick-

248 APPENDIX.

ness and in health. Hence he is the least selfish of
men. Is not the old bachelor who retires to seclusion,
always selfish ? Is not the head of a large family al-
most always kind and benevolent? And is not the
slave-holder the head of the largest family ? Nature
compels master and slave to be friends ; nature makes
employers and free laborers enemies.

The institution of slavery gives full development and
full play to the affections. Free society chills, stints
and eradicates them. In a homely way the farm will
support all, and we are not in a hurry to send our chil-
dren into the world, to push their way and make their
fortunes, with a capital of knavish maxims. We are
better husbands, better fathers, better friends, and bet-
ter neighbors than our Northern brethren. The tie of
kindred to the fifth degree is often a tie of affection
with us. First cousins are scarcely acknowledged at
the North, and even children are prematurely pushed
off into the world. Love for others is the organic law
of our society, as self-love is of theirs.

Every social structure must have its substratum.
In free society this substratum, the weak, poor and
ignorant, is borne down upon and oppressed with con-
tinually increasing weight by all above. We have
solved the problem of relieving this substratum from
the pressure from above. The slaves are the substra-
tum, and the master's feelings and interests alike pre-
vent him from bearing down upon and oppresaing
them. With us the pressure on society is like that
of air or water, so equally diffused as not any where
to be felt. With them it is the pressure of the enor-

APPENDIX. 249

mous screw, never yielding, continually increasing.
Free laborers are little better than trespassers on tbis
earth given by G-od to all mankind. The birds of the
air have nests, and the foxes have holes, but they have
not where to lay their heads. They are driven to cities
to dwell in damp and crowded cellars, and thousands
are even forced to lie in the open air. This accounts
for the rapid growth of Northern cities. The feudal
Barons were more generous and hospitable and less
tyrannical than the petty land-holders of modern times.
Besides, each inhabitant of the barony was considered
as having some right of residence, some claim to pro-
tection from the Lord of the Manor. A few of them
escaped to the municipalities for purposes of trade, and
to enjoy a larger liberty. Now penury and the want of
a home drive thousands to towns. The slave always
has a home, always an interest in the proceeds of the
soil.

An intelligent New Englander, who was much op-
posed to negro slavery, boasting of his own country,
told us that native New Englanders rarely occupied
the place of domestic or body servants, or that of hired
day laborers on public works. Emigrants alone served
as menials, cleansed the streets, and worked on rail-
roads and canals. New England is busy importing
white free laborers for the home market, and catching
negroes in Africa for the Brazilian market Some of
the negroes die on the passage, but few after they
arrive in Brazil. The masters can't afford to neglect
them. Many of the white laborers die on the passage
of cholera and other diseases occasioned by filth and

250 APPENDIX.

crowding — a fourth of them probably in the first year
after they arrive, for the want of employment or the
neglect of employers. The horrors of the middle pas-
sage are nothing to the horrors of a deck passage up
the Mississippi when cholera prevails, or the want,
penury and exposure that emigrants are subjected to
in our large cities. England, too, has a tender con-
science about slavery, but she is importing captured
African slaves into her colonies to serve as apprentices,
and extending this new species of slave trade even to
Asia. "Expel nature with a fork, she will soon re-
turn." Slavery is natural and necessary, and will in
some form insinuate itself into all civilized society. — ■
The domestic slave trade is complained of, and justly
too, because it severs family ties. It is one of the
evils of slavery, and no institution is without its evils.
But how is it with New England ? Are none of the
free, the delicately reared and enlightened forced to quit
the domestic hearth and all its endearments, to seek a
living among strangers ? Delicacy forbids our dwelling
on this painful topic. The instances are before our
eyes. What would induce a "Virginian, rich or poor,
to launch such members of his family unattended on
the cold world.

More than half of the white citizens of the North are
common laborers, either in the field, or as body or house
servants. They perform the same services that our
slaves do. They serve their employers for hire; they
have quite as little option whether they shall so serve,
or not, as our slaves, for they cannot live without their
wages. Their hire or wages, except with the healthy

APPENDIX. 251

and able-bodied, are not half what we allow our slaves,
for it is wholly insufficient for their comfortable main-
tenance, whilst we always keep our slaves in comfort, in
return for their past, present, or expected labor. The
socialists say wages is slavery. It is a gross libel on
slavery. Wages are given in time of vigorous health
and strength, and denied when most needed, when sick-
ness or old age has overtaken us. The slave is never
without a master to maintain him. The free laborer,
though willing to work, cannot always find an employer.
He is then without a home and without wages ! In a
densely peopled country, where the supply of laborers
exceeds the demand, wages is worse than slavery. Oh !
Liberty and Equality, to what a sad pass do you bring
your votaries ! This is the exact condition to which
the mass of society is reduced in France and England,
and to which it is rapidly approximating in our North-
ern States. This state of things brought about the
late revolution in France. The Socialist rulers un-
dertook to find employment, put the laborers of Paris
to work, transplanting trees and digging the earth.
This experiment worked admirably in all but one re-
spect. The government could find employment, but
could not find wages. The Right to Employment !
Frenchmen deluged Paris with fraternal gore to vindi-
cate this right. The right to live when you are strong-
enough to work, for it is then only you want employ-
ment. Poor as this boon would be, it is one which
Liberty and Equality cannot confer. If it were con-
ferred, the free laborer's condition would still be below

252 APPENDIX.

the slave's, for the wages of the slave are paid whether
he is fit for employment or not.

Oh carry, carry me back to old Virginia shore,
For I am old and feeble grown,
And cannot work any more.

Liberty and Equality, thou art humble in thy preten-
sions; thou askest little. But that little inexorable
fate denies thee. Literally and truly, " darkness,
death and black despair surround thee."

In France, England, Scotland and Ireland, the ge-
nius of famine hovers o'er the land. Emigrants, like a
flock of hungry pigeons or Egyptian locusts, are aligni-
ng on the North. Every green thing will soon be
iconsumed. The hollow, bloated prosperity which she
now enjoys is destined soon to pass away. Her wealth
does not increase with her numbers ; she is dependent
for the very necessaries of life on the slaveholding
States. If those States cut off commercial intercourse
with her, as they certainly will do if she does not
speedily cease interference with slavery, she will be
without food or clothing for her overgrown population.
She is already threatened with a social revolution. The
right to separate property in land is not only questioned
by many, but has been successfully denied in the case
of the Anti-Renters. Judges and Governors are elected
upon pledges that they will sustain those who deny this
right and defy the law. The editor of the most influ-
ential paper in the North, lately a member of Congress,
is carrying on open war, not only against the right of
property, but against every institution held sacred by

APPENDIX. 253

society. A people who can countenance and patronise
such doctrines, are almost ripe to carry those doctrines
into practice. An insurrection of the poor against the
rich may happen speedily among them. Should it oc-
cur, they have no means of suppressing it. No stand-
ing army, no efficient militia, no strength in their State
governments. Society is hurrying on to the gulf of
agrarianisni, and no port of safety is in sight; no
remedy for the evils with which it is beset has been
suggested, save the remedies of the Socialists ; reme-
dies tried in France and proved to be worthless. Pop-
ulation is too dense to introduce negro slaves. White
men will not submit to be slaves, and are not fitted for
slavery if they would. To the European race some de-
gree of liberty is necessary, though famine stare them
in the face. We are informed in Holy Writ, that God
ordained certain races of men for slaves. The wisest
philosopher of ancient times, with the experience of
slavery before his eyes, proclaimed the same truth.
Modern Abolitionists, wiser than Moses and Aristotle,
have discovered that all men should be free. They
have yet to discover the means of sustaining their lives
in a state of freedom.

At the slaveholding South all is peace, quiet, plenty
and contentment. We have no mobs, no trades unions,
no strikes for higher wages, no armed resistance to the
law, but little jealousy of the rich by the poor. We
have but few in our jails, and fewer in our poor houses.
We produce enough of the comforts and necessaries of
life for a population three or four times as numerous as
ours. We are wholly exempt from the torrent of pau-

254 APPENDIX.

perism, crime, agrarianisni, and infidelity which Eu-
rope is pouring from her jails and alms houses on the
already crowded North. Population increases slowly,
wealth rapidly. In the tide water region of Eastern
Virginia, as far as our experience extends, the crops
have doubled in fifteen years, whilst the population has
been almost stationary. In the same period the lands,
owing to improvements of the soil and the many fine
houses erected in the country, have nearly doubled in
value. This ratio of improvement has been approxi-
mated or exceeded wherever in the South slaves are
numerous. We have enough for the present, and no
Malthusian spectres frightening us for the future.
Wealth is more equally distributed than at the North,
where a few millionaires own most of the property of
the country. (These millionaires are men of cold hearts
and weak minds; they know how to make money, but
not how to use it, either for the benefit of themselves
or of others.) High intellectual and moral attainments,
refinement of head and heart, give standing to a man
in the South, however poor he may be. Money is,
with few exceptions, the only thing that ennobles at
the North. We have poor among us, but none who
are over- worked and under-fed. We do not crowd cities
because lands are abundant and their owners kind,
merciful and hospitable. The poor are as hospitable
as the rich, the negro as the white man. Nobody
dreams of turning a friend, a relative, or a stranger
from his door. The very negro who deems it no crime
to steal, would scorn to sell his hospitality. We have
no loafers, because the poor relative or friend who bor-

APPENDIX. 255

rows our horse, or spends a week under our roof, is a
welcome guest. The loose economy, the wasteful mode
of living at the South, is a blessing when rightly con-
sidered; it keeps want, scarcity and famine at a dis-
tance, because it leaves room for retrenchment. The
nice, accurate economy of France, England and New
England, keeps society always on the verge of famine,
because it leaves no room to retrench, that is to live
on a part only of what they now consume. Our so-
ciety exhibits no appearance of precocity, no symptoms
of decay. A long course of continuing improvement is
in prospect before us, with no limits which human
foresight can descry. Actual liberty and equality with
our white population has been approached much nearer
than in the free States. Few of our whites ever work
as day laborers, none as cooks, scullions, ostlers, body
servants, or in other menial capacities. One free citi-
zen does not lord it over another; hence that feeling
of independence and equality that distinguishes us;
hence that pride of character, that self-respect, that'
gives us ascendancy when we come in contact with
Northerners. It is a distinction to be a Southerner, as
it was once to be a Roman citizen.

In Virginia we are about to reform our constitution.
A fair opportunity will be afforded to draw a wider line
of distinction between freemen and slaves, to elevate
higher the condition of the citizen, to inspire every
white man with pride of rank and position. We should
do more for education. We have to educate but half
of society, at the North they attempt to educate all.
Besides, here all men have time for self-education, for

256 APPENDIX.

reading and reflection. Nobody works long hours.
We should prohibit the exercise of mechanic arts to
slaves (except on their master's farm) and to free ne-
groes. We should extend the right of sufferage to all
native Virginians, and to Southerners who move to
Virginia, over twenty-one years of age. We should
permit no foreigner and no Northerner, who shall here-
after remove to the State, to vote in elections. We
should have a small, well drilled, paid militia, to take
the place of the patrol and the present useless militia
system. All men of good character should serve on
juries without regard to property qualification. Thus
we should furnish honorable occupation to all our citi-
zens, whilst we cultivated and improved their minds
by requiring them all to take part in the administration
of justice and of government. We should thus make
poverty as honorable as it was in Greece and Rome;
for to be a Virginian would be a higher distinction
than wealth or title could bestow. We should cease to
be a bye-word and reproach among nations for our
love of the almighty dollar. We should be happy in
the confidence that our posterity would never occupy
the place of slaves, as half mankind must ever do in
free society. Until the last fifteen years, our great
error was to imitate Northern habits, customs and in-
stitutions. Our circumstances are so opposite to theirs,
that whatever suits them is almost sure not to suit us.
Until that time, in truth, we distrusted our social sys-
tem. We thought slavery morally wrong, we thought
it would not last, we thought it unprofitable. The Abo-
litionists assailed us ; we looked more closely into our

APPENDIX. 257

circumstances ) became satisfied that slavery was morally
right, that it would continue ever to exist, that it was as
profitable as it was humane. This begat self-confidence,
self-reliance. Since then our improvement has been rapid.
Now we may safely say, that we are the happiest, most
contented and prosperous people on earth. The inter-
meddling of foreign pseudo-philanthopists in our affairs,
though it has occasioned great irritation and indigna-
tion, has been of inestimable advantage in teaching us
to form a right estimate of our condition. This inter-
meddling will soon cease ; the poor at home in thunder
tones demand their whole attention and all their charity.
Self-preservation will compel them to listen to their de-
mands. Moreover, light is breaking in upon us from
abroad. All parties in England now agree that the
attempt to put down the slave trade has greatly aggrava-
ted its horrors, without at all diminishing the trade itself.
It is proposed to withdraw her fleet from the African
coast. France has already given notice that she will
withdraw hers. America will follow the example. The
emancipation of the slaves in the "West Indies is ad-
mitted to have been a failure in all respects. The late
masters have been ruined, the liberated slaves refuse to
work, and are fast returning to the savage state, and
England herself has sustained a severe blow in the
present diminution and prospective annihilation of
the once enormous imports from her West Indian
colonies.

In conclusion, we will repeat the propositions, in
somewhat different phraseology, with which we set out.
First — That Liberty and Equality, with their concomi-

258 APPENDIX.

tant Free Competition, beget a war in society that is
as destructive to its weaker members as the custom of
exposing the deformed and crippled children. Sec-
ondly — That slavery protects the weaker members of
society just as do the relations of parent, guardian and
husband, and is as necessary, as natural, and almost as
universal as those relations. Is our demonstration im-
perfect ? Does universal experience sustain our theory ?
Should the conclusions to which we have arrived ap-
pear strange and startling, let them therefore not be re-
jected without examination. The world has had but
little opportunity to contrast the working of Liberty and
Equality with the old order of things, which always par-
took more or less of the character of domestic slavery.
The strong prepossession in the public mind in favor of
the new system, makes it reluctant to attribute the evil
phenomena which it exhibits, to defects inherent in the
system itself. That these defects should not have been
foreseen and pointed out by any process of a priori
reasoning, is but another proof of the fallibility of hu-
man sagacity and foresight when attempting to foretell
the operation of new institutions. It is as much as hu-
man reason can do, when examining the complex frame
of society, to trace effects back to their causes — much
more than it can do, to foresee what effects new causes
will produce. We invite investigation.

WHAT SHALL BE DONE

VTITH

THE FREE NEGROES?

Nearly one half the civilized world is deeply inter-
ested in the solution of this question — but especially
France, England and America. Already the emanci-
pation of the blacks has occasioned many evils, and
been productive of no ostensible good to themselves or
to the whites. In the West Indian dominions of France
and England, all industry is paralyzed, and the most
fertile islands in the world threaten soon to become
desert wastes, infested with lawless savages. The blacks
so far outnumber the whites, that the latter will remove,
or remain to witness the acting over again the tragedy
of St. Domingo. The crusades occasioned less human
suffering than has ensued or is certain to ensue from
the emancipation of the blacks in the West Indies.
The crusades, with all their iniquities, gave the first
great impulse to civilization. West Indian emancipa-
tion has expelled civilization and veiled those lovely
Isles with the thick curtain of ignorance and supersti-
tion. The masters have been robbed of their farms
and of their slaves, with more millions than even Croe-
sus dreampt of — yet their loss is as nothing compared to
the loss the slaves have sustained in being deprived of
the tutelary guardianship of those masters. The mas-

260 APPENDIX.

ters may return to a civilized land — a land of law and
order — there to enjoy the blessings of civilized life, per-
haps to retrieve their ruined fortunes — or better still,
to learn resignation to their fate at the altar of the
Christian God. The emancipated negroes do not work,
and hunger will soon drive them to every sort of crime.
The light of Christianity, which was fast spreading
amongst them, is destined to speedy extinction, and vile
superstisions will supply its place. It is hardly too
bold a figure to say that in losing his master, the negro
has lost all hope here and hereafter. The civilized
world has sustained a great loss in the diminution of
the products of those Isles, which products have be-
come the common food of half of mankind. But it is
needless to enumerate the many evils that short-sighted
philanthropy has inflicted on the West Indies and on
the world at large, by emancipation, and equally need-
less to speculate about the remedy : there is no remedy,
and it is not our business to propose it if there were.

In the United States the situation of the free blacks
is becoming worse every day. The silly attempts of
the Abolitionists to put ^theni on a footing of equality
with the white?, has exasperated the laboring whites at
the North, and excited odium and suspicion against
them at the South. The natural antipathies of race
have been fanned into such a degree of excitement, that
the free negro is bandied from pillar to post — from
North to South and from South to North, till not a ray
of hope is left him of a quiet, permanent residence any
where, so long as he remains free. Illinois and Cali-
fornia will not permit him to enter their dominions —

1 APPENDIX. 261

Ohio places him under severe conditions, and is now
moving to expel him altogether, and Virginia also pro-
poses to send him back to Africa. Mobs in our North-
ern cities drive him from his home and hunt him
like a wild beast. Two great movements, or rather one
great and one very small movement, may be observed
in constant and busy operation as to the negro race.
The small movement is that of the fanatical Abolition-
ists, who would free the whole race and put them on a
social and political equality with the whites. The great
movement is that proceeding from hostility of race, and
proposes to get rid of the negroes altogether, not to
free them. This movement is not confined to the North.
Thousands, we regret to say, at the South, who think
slavery a blessing to the negro, believe the negro a curse
to the country. So far as the slaves are concerned, this
opinion is fast changing. Men begin to look more
closely at what the slaveholders have been doing since
our Revolution, and find that they have been exceeded
in skill, enterprise and industry, by no people under
the sun. They have settled a vast territory from the
Alleghany to the La Platte — from the Rio Grande to
the Ohio, contending all the while with blood-thirsty
savages and a climate more to be dreaded than even
those savages themselves — and are already producing a
greater agricultural surplus than any people in the
world. They see, too, that the condition of the white
man is elevated and equalized, for the blacks perform
all menial duties and occupy the place of servants.
The white laborers of the North think the existence of
negroes at the North as free, or at the South as slaves,

262 APPENDIX.

injurious to themselves. They do not like the compe-
tition of human beings who have all the physical pow-
ers of men, with the wants only of brutes. Free Soil-
ism pretty well represents and embodies this feeling.
It is universal at the North, because the hostility to
negroes — the wish to get rid of their competition is uni-
versal there. It excludes free negroes from California
as well as slaves, showing that the Wilmot Proviso is
directed against the negro race — not against slavery.
This great movement, which proposes to get rid of ne-
groes, rather than of slavery, is gathering strength every
day, and so far as the free negroes are concerned it
must soon sweep them away; for neither the feel-
ings nor the interests of any part of the community,
except of a few crazy Abolitionists, can be enlisted in
their behalf. The slaves have masters to guard and
protect them — and guard, protect and hold them they
will, cost what it may.

The free negroes are no doubt an intolerable nui-
sance. They blight the prosperity of every village and
of every country neighborhood where they settle. They
are thieves from necessity, for nature has made them so
improvident they cannot in health provide for ^sickness,
in youth for old age, nor in summer for winter. Na-
ture formed them for a climate where all their" wants
were supplied abundantly by her liberal hand at every
season. We knew their natures when we set them free.
Should we blame them, or censure ourselves ? We knew
they were not fitted for liberty, and yet conferred lib-
erty on them. Our wiser ancestors made them slaves,
because as slaves they might be made civilized, useful

APPENDIX. 263

and christian beings. We subject children till twenty-
one years of age to the control of their parents, or ap-
point guardians for them. We subject wives to the
dominion of their husbands — apprentices to their mas-
ters. We permit sailors and soldiers to sell their liber-
ties for terms of years. We send criminals to jails
and penitentiaries, and lunatics to hospitals. In all
these cases, we take away the liberties of the whites,
either for the benefit of individuals or for the good of
society. We act upon the principle that no one is en-
titled to liberty who will abuse it to the detriment of
himself or of others. The law curtails and restricts
the freedom of the wisest and the best; — the straight
jacket and manacles of iron are applied to the weakest
and most wicked. There is no perfect liberty with the
whites, but every degree of slavery, from law to straight
jackets. The free blacks, who most need the control
of masters, guardians, curators or committees are left
to the enjoyment of the largest liberty. Law alone is
expected to control and regulate their conduct. We
had as well publish laws to our herds and flocks. Men,
to be governed by mere law, must possess great intel-
ligence, and have acquired habits of self-control and
self-denial. The whites from 15 to 21 years of age
lack not intelligence, but habits of self-control, to fit
them for government by law alone. The arbitrary will
of the parent or guardian must be superadded to the
mandates of the law, to save them from the indiscre-
tions into which their feelings and their passions would
lead them. The free negroes as a class, have less in-
telligence and less self-control, than the whites over 15

264 APPENDIX.

years of age. A good government graduates as nicely
as is practicable, each man's liberty to bis capacity for
its enjoyment — it is obliged, however, to establish gen-
eral rules, and thus occasions many cases of individ-
ual hardship. The white male adults, over twenty-one
years of age, are presumed to possess enough of virtue,
intelligence and self-control, to be left with no other
control than that of the law — yet of those we meet
with thousands who from habitual drunkenness, from
excessive improvidence and extravagance, or from strong
criminal propensities, are wholly unfitted for the gov-
ernment of mere law, and stand in need of the will of
a superior to control their conduct, and save them from
ruining themselves, their friends and families. On the
other hand, we find many instances of wisdom and pru-
dence among whites under 21 years of age, whom the
law, nevertheless, subjects to the control of guardians
and parents often less wise, less virtuous, and less pru-
dent than themselves. In subjecting the free blacks
to the will of white masters, fewer instances of injustice
of this kind would occur, than now occur with the
whites, because as a class they are less fitted for self-
government than the whites between the ages of 15
and 21. A free negro ! Why, the very term seems
an absurdity. It is our daily boast, and experience veri-
fies it, that the Anglo-Saxons of America are the only
people in the world fitted for freedom The negro's is
not human freedom, but the wild and vicious license of
the fox, the wolf or the hawk. He is, from the neces-
sity of his nature, a very Ishmaelite, whose hand is
against every man, and every man's hand is against

APPENDIX. 265

him. It is as much the duty of government to take
away liberty from those who abuse it, as to confer it
on those who use it properly. It practises every day,
as we have shewn, on this principle, in its treatment of
the whites, and why should it hesitate to do so in re-
gard to the blacks ? It is the object and duty of gov-
ernment to protect men, not merely from wrong and in-
justice from others, but from the consequences of their
own vices, imprudence and improvidence. The hum-
blest member of society, no matter what the color of his
skin, has a right to this protection. The experience of
all ages, and of all countries, shows that this protec-
tion to a weaker race like the negro, living among a su-
perior race, can only be given by bestowing on him a
master whose will shall be the law of his conduct,
whose skill and foresight shall amass and provide for
him in sickness and in old age, and whose power shall
shield him from the consequences of his own improvi-
dence. The vassalage and serfdom of Europe, the
slavery of America, and the peonage of Mexico, alike
point to this as the natural and proper method of gov-
erning free negroes. The wisdom of the common law,
and indeed of all ancient codes, distinctly teaches the
same truth; for guardians, parents, husbands, commit-
tees, and various officers, are but masters by another
name. They are all intended to supply, in more or
less degree, that want of self-control which unfits large
classes of the whites for self-government. But there is
a peculiar necessity for some measure of this kind, with
regard to the blacks, growing out of the antipathies of
race. They are threatened with violent extermination.
M

266 APPENDIX.

The fate of the Indians shows that they will be exter-
minated, if they continue so useless and so troublesome.
Had the Indian been useful as a slave, he would have
survived and become a civilized and christian being;
but he was found as useless, as troublesome, and as in-
tractable as a beast of prey, and has shared the fate of
a beast of prey. The negro, in the condition of slavery,
is a happy, contented, and useful being. It is the
state for which nature intended, and to which our an-
cestors, quite as wise and virtuous as ourselves, con-
signed him. We have fully and fairly tried the ex-
periment of freeing him ; we have witnessed its uni-
versal and deplorable failure, and it is now our right
and our duty, to listen to the voice of wisdom and ex-
perience, and re-consign him to the only condition for
which he is suited.

There is another and an urgent reason why his very
existence requires that he should be subjected to some
modification of slavery. His lot is cast among the
Anglo-Saxon race, and what people can stand free com-
petition with that race ? The Romans conquered Eng-
land, and the ancient Britons flourished and became
civilized under their rule. The Saxon, Dane and Nor-
man came, and nothing remains to tell of the exist-
ence of the Britons but the names of a few rivers.
The Indian is exterminated from Maine to Georgia,
the Hindoos are perishing under British rule by mil-
lions, the Spaniard is hardly heard of in Florida, and
Peonage alone can save the Mexican from annihilation.
From the days of Hengist and Horsa, to those of Hous-
ton, the same adventurous, rapacious, exterminating

APPENDIX. 267

spirit has characterised the race. Can the negro live
with all his reckless improvidence under the shade of
this Upas tree, whose deadly poison spares no other
race ? Is he fitted to compete with a people who, in
the struggle of life, have outstripped and exterminated
all other nations with whom they have come in con-
tact? No. Throwing out of view the signs of the
times, pregnant with growing hate and hostility to the
free negro, the experience of the past shows that his
present condition is hopeless j but make him property,
and this same Anglo-Saxon will protect, guard and
cherish him, for no people on earth love property
more, will go greater lengths, so far as danger is con-
cerned, to obtain it, or take better care of it after it is
obtained.

We will not undertake to decide what degree or modi-
fication of servitude shall be adopted, but will suggest
that peonage, which is probably one of its mildest forms,
might be instituted. To attain this, it is only neces-
sary to repeal so much of the common law as prevents
a man's parting with his personal liberty. Indeed, the
common law, in the cases of soldiers and sailors, per-
mits even white men to sell themselves and bind their
persons for a term of years. Grant the same privilege
to the free negro at all times, and we think there will
be few of them left free in ten years to come. They
cannot now, we know from experience, obtain much
more than half the yearly hire of slaves,| because the
hirer has no security that they will remain till the end
of the year. Their improvidence, and their desire to
obtain the protection of some white man, would drive

268 APPENDIX.

them all into contracts of this kind. The nuisance
would thus be abated, and in its place we should ac-
quire a class of strong, healthy laborers. If this plan
did not work well, the State authorities should, at the
beginning of each year, hire all those out who owned
not enough property to support themselves. Part of the
hires might be paid over to them, and the balance re-
tained as a fund to support the infants, the aged, and in-
firm here, or used as a means to send them all to Africa.
If experience showed that nothing short of absolute
slavery would meet the exigencies of the case, then give
them a year's notice to quit the State, or be sold into un-
conditional slavery. This last alternative would still place
them in a situation of much greater security and comfort
than they now any where enjoy, or can ever probably en-
joy, in a state of unlimited freedom. We think it a more
humane measure, and a more politic one, than to send
them to Africa. If it be necessary, it must be right.
Reducing men to slavery has been practised through-
out all time, and by men as good, and as wise as our-
selves. Practised too, continually, upon men much bet-
ter, much wiser, and much more suited for freedom
than the negro. There is more of selfishness, less of
exalted, chivalrous disinterested virtue in this utilitarian
age, than in most of those with which we are acquainted,
that have preceded it. We only

Compound for sins we are inclined to,
By damning those ice have no mind to.

Liberty is the great hobby of this money-making age,
and the over-ruling argument in its favor is borrowed
from the arithmetic. " Free labor is more productive
than slave labor. It is cheaper to hire the laborer,

APPENDIX. 269

when you want him, and turn him out to starve when
you have done with him, than to buy a slave and sup-
port him through all the seasons of the year, and
through all the periods of his life. Besides, the free
man whose very life depends on it, will work harder
than the slave, who is sure of a support, whether he
works or not." Since the slave-trade is abolished, which
was a lucrative and favorite pursuit of the Yankees and
English, those gentry have, from the above interested
calculations, turned abolitionists. Our Southern pa-
triots, at the time of the Revolution, finding negroes
expensive and useless, became warm anti-slavery men.
We, their wiser sons, having learned to make cotton
and sugar, find slavery very useful and profitable, and
think it a most excellent institution. "We of the South
advocate slavery, no doubt, from just as selfish motives
as induce the Yankees and English to deprecate it.
"We have, however, almost all human and divine author-
ity on our side of the argument. The Bible no where
condemns, and throughout recognises slavery. Slavery
has been so universal in the civilized world, and so lit-
tle, if at all known among savages, that its occasional
absence of late years in civilized nations, seems to in-
dicate something wrong or rotten in their condition.
The starving state of the poor in all such countries,
furnishes the solution of the difficulty, and indicates the
character of the disease under which society is suffer-
ing. They have become too poor to have slaves, whom
the law would oblige them to support. "We have never
met with a Southern man, of late years, who did not
think slavery a blessing to the negro race. We have

2T0 APPENDIX.

never heard a single white man maintain that this race
was qualified for freedom, nor met with one who did not
complain of the free negroes as a nuisance. Now, how
strange and inconsistent in us to permit men to remain
free, whose freedom is a curse to themselves and a nui-
sance to society. How cruel and unwise in us not to
extend the blessings of slavery to the free negroes,
which work so well with the slaves. Humanity, self-
interest, consistency, all require that we should enslave
the free negro. We enslave the whites whenever the
good of the individual, or of society requires it, in the
many instances we have cited, and leave the free negro
to roam at large in liberty as untrammelled and un-
constrained as that of the beasts of the field or birds of
the air. They are restrained neither by the convention-
alities of society, the bonds of religion, the laws of mo-
rality, the chain of marriage, the authority of parents
or guardians, nor by the power of a master. They
who are least fitted for liberty are scarcely subjected to
any governmental control whatever.

But if they be qualified for liberty, so are our slaves,
and we are acting morally wrong in retaining in bond-
age beings who would be better off as freemen. The
slave, if set free, would be just what the free negroes
now are, and if that be a desirable condition, one bet-
ter for them and for society, than that they are now in,
we ought to set about making free negroes of them.
Both cases are before us, we have ample experience of
the working of both. It is not only our right, but
our duty to cherish and encourage that condition of

APPENDIX. 271

the negro race which works well — to abolish that which
works badly.

The free negroes corrupt our slaves and make them
less contented with their situation. Their competition
is injurious to our white laboring citizens. Their wants
are so few and simple, that when they do work, they
will take lower wages than the white man can afford
to receive ; besides, it is as well the policy as the duty
of the State to elevate the condition of her citizens,
not to send them in the labor market with negroes for
competitors. Let the negro always occupy a situation
subordinate to the white man. North and South, every
deviation from this policy leads to violence, in which
the blacks are the sufferers. The law cannot make ne-
groes free if it would, because society will not tolerate
it. The signs of the times, North and South, clearly
show that the free negroes will be borne with no lon-
ger by society. If the subject be promptly attended to
by State governments, some disposition of them may be
made consistent with humanity. If legislative action
be delayed, the people in their primary capacity, in
vulgar parlance mobs, will take the case in hand. We
heard but recently, that the people in one of our coun-
ties had given them notice to quit. Quit ! and go
where ? To be turned out and hunted like the bagged
fox.

272 APPENDIX.

II.

Is there any good reason why men should not be
allowed to sell their liberty? Is it wise, politic or hu-
mane, to prevent the man, who sees his family starving
around him, from hiring himself so as to bind his per-
son, even for a day, a week, or a month, to save himself
and family from death ? Could the poor Irish sell
themselves and families for a term of years, to the
farmers of our Northwestern States, in order to pay
their passage to this country, and secure them from want
on their arrival, would there be any thing unwise or
unmerciful in the laws which permitted it? The law
did once permit it, for Virginia was in great part settled
by indented servants, and by the descendants of girls
bought up in London and sold to the planters here for
wives. Indeed, all women literally sell their liberties
when they marry, and very few repent of the bargain.
Among the civilized States of antiquity, the right to sell
one's liberty, we believe, was universal. Is it not a
curtailment of liberty to deny the right ? The starving
poor would often think so. To the victim of intempe-
rance who has just recovered from an attack of delirium
tremens, such a right would be worth all the temperance
societies in the world. His enervated will can no longer
control him, and the law will not permit him to adopt
the will of another. The law thus murders thousands
annually, pretending all the while to guard and protect
their rights. The army, the navy and the merchant
service are filled with men of this description. It is the
only refuge the law allows them. Those who were fitted

APPENDIX. 273

for liberty would not sell it, or if in some moment of
misfortune they did, they would buy that liberty again
by the exercise of great economy and industry. The
right to purchase their own liberty has, in other coun-
tries, been a common privilege of slaves. We mean that
white men sold into slavery would, if worthy of liberty,
purchase their freedom. We do not advocate any change
of the law that would permit them to part, even for a
day, with their personal liberty. One of the objects in
granting such privilege to free negroes, would be to draw
a wider line of distinction between the negroes and our
white citizens. But in countries where there are no
negroes, we can see no reason why the whites in all
cases might not be allowed to sell their persons for short
periods. Soldiers and sailors are allowed to do so for
the defence of the nation and the benefit of commerce.
Domestic servants and farm hands would be benefited
themselves, and their employers also benefited, could
they be hired by the year j at all events, every govern-
ment that denies this privilege of selling one's self, is
bound to provide for its poor citizens, as well as masters
provide for their slaves. But all governments permit
thousands of the poor to starve — in truth, every body
seems to have taken it for granted that this provision of
the law is right, without having taken the trouble to
examine into the reasons on which it is founded. The
reasons assigned by Blackstone in his Commentaries, are
so false and puerile, as to show that he had given no con-
sideration to the subject. The objection that a man may
not sell himself, because slavery puts his life in his mas-
ter's hands, is false as to modern slavery in all civilized

274 APPENDIX.

countries, and 'tis with this slavery we and he too had to
deal. The other objection, that the slave's property be-
longs to the master, is not a necessary or universal feature
of slavery. We would not have it so in the case of the
free negroes, when placed, as we hope they will be, in
some modified condition of slavery. His third objection,
that the consideration accrues to the master, is only true
when the slave can hold no separate property. In most
cases, no consideration would be paid, other than protec-
tion and support. Justice will compel us, in some cases,
to pay hire for the free negroes, but we know from expe-
rience that morality forbids it. We hire a free negro by
the year — we feed and clothe him, and he is anxious to
continue with us another year. We know that he spends
almost every cent of his hire in vice and debauchery, yet
he is superior to his race generally, for he is honest and
industrious. We pay him a third less hire than we
would give for him had he the right to bind his person.
Free negroes generally hire for little more than half what
slaves do : liberty costs them dear. Whilst on this sub-
ject, we would call attention to a new kind of African
slave-trade that prevails in our neighborhood ; the free
negro women hire out their children, and bask in the
sun idle and unemployed themselves. We tried to per-
suade, some days since, a young negro man, who, with
his young wife, were desperately poor, that he would be
better off as a slave, as he might expect soon to have a
large family to support, and could now scarce support
himself. He quaintly replied, " that he then would hire
out his children and live easy."

Blackstone, treating of the relative position of master
and servant, employs the following language : " The first

APPENDIX. 275

sort of servants, therefore, acknowledged by the laws of
England, are menial servants, so called from being intra
mamia, or domestics. The contract between them and
their masters arises upon the hiring. If the hiring be
general, without any particular time limited, the law
considers it to be a hiring for a year, upon a principle of
natural equity that the servant shall serve and the master
maintain him throughout all the revolutions of the re-
spective seasons, as well when there is work to be done
as when there is not — but the contract may be made for
any longer or smaller term. All single men, between
twelve years old and sixty, and married ones under thirty
years of age — and all single women between twelve and
forty, not having any visible livelihood, are compellable
by two justices to go out to service in husbandry or other
specific trades for the promotion of honest industry, and
no master can put away his servant, or servant leave his
master, after being so retained, either before or at the
end of his term, without a quarter's warning; unless
upon reasonable cause, to be allowed by a justice of the
peace ; but they may part by consent, or make a special
bargain."

Now, a statute in our State, with regard to free negroes
which should attain the ends contemplated by this Eng-
lish statute, would rid us of the nuisance. To attain
those ends, the contract of hiring should be for a year or
longer period, and should bind the person.

The Roman history contains a remarkable proof of
the kindly and friendly relations which subordination of
rank begets. The Plebeians all became the clients or
vassals of some Patrician, who was bound to advise,

276 APPENDIX.

counsel and protect them. In all the vicissitudes of the
Republic, during a lapse of six hundred years, we are
told that not a single instance occurred of faithlessness
to this tie of inferior and superior. The attachment be-
tween client and patron descended from father to son,
and made one family of the protector and protected.
How much more does the free negro need a patron than
did the Roman. Curious speculators on society, seeing
that hereditary distinctions of rank gradually disappear
in nations, have concluded that these distinctions were
all induced by conquest and difference of race. No
length of time will wear out the distinction between
blacks and whites j but proper subordination of the black
to the white man will be sure to produce the usual at-
tachment between lord and vassal, master and slave, pro-
tector and protected. The fate of the Gripsey race in
England shows the impossibility of governing half-civil-
ized beings by mere law. The laws against them were
numerous and bloody, and influenced their conduct no
more than laws passed against crows and blackbirds.
They heeded not the precepts and admonitions of the
law, and have been exterminated by the avenging sword
of the law. Such has been the fate of the Indians, and
such will be the fate of the free negroes, if mobs, to the
eternal disgrace of our country, do not anticipate the
law. History furnishes but a single instance where ne-
groes have been well governed without masters, and in
that instance the rule was ten times more rigorous than
that of the master. Tousaint, the president of Hayti,
by a strict military surveillance, kept them at work on
separate farms, and punished them capitally for the third

APPENDIX. 277

offence of quitting the farm without a written permit.
Succeeding administrations have relaxed the government
till the whole island is in a state of savage anarchy which
invites and would justify another conquest and reduction
of the inhabitants to that state of slavery for which alone
they are fitted, and from which they so wickedly escaped.

The great mortality, the vice and ignorance that pre-
vail at the British colony of Sierra Leone, show that
this attempt to improve the condition of the negro has
resulted in consequences infinitely worse than slavery.
Better governments at Liberia and Cape Palmas have
prevented, so far, the exhibition of so much gross vice
and ignorance ; but even in those colonies the mortality
is so great as to deter those who value human life as th&
greatest of human blessings from encouraging emigration
to them. But if almost certain death from the climate
did not await the emigrant negroes, they must be extir-
pated by the savages, or extirpate the savages to make
room for themselves. No habitable part of Africa is
unsettled, and the free blacks who go there in numbers
must make room for themselves, sword in hand, as the
whites did in America. We who maintain that it was a
blessing to the negro to be brought from Africa and
made a slave and a Christian, are estopped from con-
tending that it is also a blessing to set him free and send
him back to become a savage and a Pagan. Between
the two blessings, the middle passage on the inward trip
and the climate of the coast on the return, few would
survive to tell of their happiness.

Let us try the experiment of hiring them by the year,
and if that fail, sell them into unconditional slavery.

278 APPENDIX.

Slavery is a blessing to the negro — at all events, it is
better than the tender mercies of an American mob or
an African cannibal, the Scylla and Charybdis which
now threaten him. Slavery is too costly, too humane
and merciful an institution for France, England or New
England. The free competition of labor and capital in
those countries where labor is redundant, is certain to
bring the wages of labor down to the minimum amount
that will support human life. The employers of free
laborers, like the riders of hired horses, try to get the
most possible work out of them, for the least hire. They
boast of the low rates at which they procure labor, and
still hold up their heads in society uncensured and unre-
proved. No slaveholder was ever so brutal as to boast of
the low wages he paid his slaves, to pride himself on
feeding and clothing them badly — neglecting the young,
the aged, the sick and infirm; such a man would bo
hooted from society as a monster. Society hardly tole-
rates inhumanity to horses, much less to slaves. But
disguise the process a little, and it is a popular virtue to
oppress free white poor people. G-et the labor of the
able-bodied husband as cheap as you can, and leave his
wife, children and aged parents to starve, and you are
the beau ideal of a man in England and New England.
Public opinion, as well as natural feeling, requires a man
to pay his slave high wages ; the same public opinion
commends your cleverness in paying low wages to free
laborers, and nature and conscience oppose no obstacles
to the screwing process.

King Lear. Take physic, pomp ;

Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou mayest shake the superflux to them,
And show the heavens more just.

APPENDIX. 279

III,

To say that free labor is cheaper than slave labor, is
to say that the slave is better off, so far as physical
comfort is concerned, than the free laborer. The wages
of the free laborer exactly represent all the physical
material comforts he and his family can enjoy — the
cost of slave labor consists (after the slaves are pur-
chased) entirely of the comforts of life which the
master gives to his slaves. The hirer of free laborers
maintains the families of those laborers, in sickness and
in health, in infancy and in old age, precisely as does
the master his slaves — the only difference being that
the free laborer expends the hire himself for those pur-
poses, whilst the master expends it for the slave. If
free labor be cheapest, it is because it costs the employer
less to support the free laborer and his family, than it
does the master to support his slaves. Price is the
measure of things useful to man. If the slave's labor
costs more than the free man's, he gets a larger measure
of things useful to mankind. Now this is exact or de-
monstrative reasoning, because it treats of quantities
of things physical or material, which admit of ad-
measurement. Mathematical certainty is attainable by
argument of this kind. We think, (granting our prem-
ises, that free labor is cheaper than slave labor,) we
have attained this degree of certainty. We add as a
corollary, that the slave's physical condition is exactly
so much better than the free laborer's, as the cost of
slave labor exceeds that of free labor. Now, as to the
relative moral condition of the slave and the free laborer,

280 APPENDIX.

reasoning of this kind cannot be employed at all, be-
cause we have to deal with things moral and metaphys-
ical, in which there are no ascertainable quantities —
no standard of admeasurement to appeal to. We can
measure the physical comforts of life — such as food,
raiment, &c, in various ways; but all of them, by the
common, agreed standard of price — the amount of dol-
lars and cents which they cost — but we cannot measure
morality, virtue, hope, happiness, despair, &c. To il-
lustrate, the slave feels secure for himself and family,
of future comfortable maintenance, but hopeless as to
bettering his condition. The free laborer is harrowed
with fears and apprehensions of the future, but along
with these fears and apprehensions, entertains the hope
of changing and improving his condition. In these
cases we can get at no precise quantities — appeal to no
standard of measure, to determine whether the attri-
butes of slavery, or those of liberty are of greater
quantity or value. Wo launch on a sea of moral or
speculative reasoning, where we cannot approximate any
thing like proof — each man's taste will be the only
arbiter, and de gustibus non est disputandum. We
have inverted, intentionally, the correct order of reason-
ing. We come in the last place to prove our premises;
we knew the reader would admit them till he saw the
conclusions to which they infallibly led — then many a
reader will revolt at -those premises, because they lead
to what are, in his mind, revolting conclusions. First,
then, free labor is cheaper than slave labor, in a thickly
settled country, else the European nations who sent
slaves to America would have also employed them at

APPENDIX.

.

home ; for it is notorious that as a general, almost an
universal rule, farmers and other capitalists employ
that labor which is cheapest.

Secondly. The slave-holding South is supplied by
the North and other non-slaveholding countries, with
all articles that can be made as well at the North as at
the South — which proves that it is cheaper to employ
free labor to make those articles and pay the expenses
of transportation, than to have them made by slaves at
home.

Thirdly. In all old countries there is a superfluity
of laborers, and they, in competing to get employment,
under-bid each other, till wages reach the lowest point,
that will support human existence ; but the master is
afraid so to depress the wages of his slave, else he
might lose the slave.

Fourthly. The Puritan fathers and their immediate
descendants were active slave-traders and slave-holders —
their later posterity, neither more pious nor moral than
their ancestors or their Southern neighbors, liberated
their slaves, we may fairly infer, because they found
free labor cheaper.

Fifthly. It has been generally admitted by the op-
ponents of slavery that free labor is cheaper.

Having demonstrated that the physical condition of
the slave is better than that of the free laborer, it re-
mains only that we should apply this conclusion to the
free negroes whom we propose to enslave. Their phys-
ical condition would be improved by slavery, and their
moral condition could not be made worse, for, unlike
the white man, they have no hope of changing and

282 APPENDIX.

improving their condition whilst free. They cannot
escape from the class of common laborers. The whites
above them oppose an insuperable barrier to their ele-
vation. It is certainly better to be a slave than a free
laborer, without hope of improving one's condition.

[Note. — We have left out the original cost of the
slaves, in estimating the relative cheapness of slave
and free, because formerly African slaves cost so little
as not to have seriously influenced the preference given
to free labor in Europe, and more recently our Northern
States, after incurring that cost, found it cheaper to
liberate the slaves and employ free labor.]

IV.

Has the State the right to enslave them ? Slavery
is but a form of government, and we have shewn it is
the duty and practice of every State to adopt the de-
gree of control and form of government as near as
practicable to the capacity and necessity of each indi-
vidual. Guardians are provided for children, masters
for apprentices, captains for sailors and soldiers, dark
cells and hard work for convicts, and straight jackets
for lunatics. No one doubts that it is as well the right
as the duty of government to make these provisions,
and abridge or take away liberty from all white citizens
who are not qualified to enjoy it. Every other form
of government than that of slavery has signally failed
in the case of the negro. He is an enemy to himself,
and an intolerable pest and nuisance to society, where
ever among the whites he is free. The Abolitionists
failing in their efforts to free the slaves, have sue.

APPENDIX. 283

ceeded wonderfully in aggravating and embittering the
natural hostility of the white and black race. They
have prompted the free negroes to assert their equality
with the whites, and in return for their insolence, the
whites are ready to expel them from the land. But
expulsion is now, at least, impracticable. If it ever
succeeds, it will require ages to complete it. In the
meantime, it is the right and duty of the State to en-
slave them, because experience has clearly proved that
it is the only practicable mode of governing them.
We deprive them of no right, because no one, black
or white, has a right to liberty who abuses it to the
detriment of himself or of society. They have the
right to the protection and care of masters, but the
law denies them the exercise of that right in not per-
mitting them to hire or sell themselves. The common
notion that liberty is good for man, is one of the most
false and foolish that ever entered the human mind.
None but brutes and savages desire entire liberty.
The only free people in the world are the Digger In-
dians of the Valley of the Great Salt Lake and the
Australians of New Holland j they know nothing of
government, of society, of castes, of classes, or of sub-
ordination of rank ; each man digs for worms and
climbs for birds' eggs on his own hook ; they are per-
fectly free, famished and degraded. We admire and
love liberty, coupled with happiness, as much as any
one. "We pine with the caged bird, and rejoice with
the free warblers of the grove and the forest. The
sportive gambols of the colt fill us with pleasure.

Quae velut latis eqaa trima campia
Ludit exultim metuit que tangi.

284 APPENDIX.

Nature has fitted such creatures for liberty j but of
cold, shivering, naked, houseless, starving liberty, the
liberty of the prodigal son and the free negro, we
entertain much the same opinion that Falstaff did of
honor: — ""What is honor? A word. What is in that
word honor ? What is that honor ? Air. A trim
reckoning ! — \V ho hath it ? He who died o' Wednes-
day. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No.
Is it insensible then ? Yea, to the dead. But it will
not live with the living — therefore I'll none of it.
Honor is a mere scutcheon, and so ends my catechism."
As civilization advances liberty recedes. The Cossacks
of Russia are a thousand times more free than the en-
lightened inhabitants of the city of New York. The
Cossacks, living far from government, and having little
property, are scarcely aware that a government exists.
The enlightened citizen of New York daily feels the
operation of the laws of the Union, the laws of the
State, and the laws of the corporation; he is probably
a member of a church, a club, of a Masonic society,
and of a board of trade — he is controlled in his conduct
by the rules, regulations and laws of all these institu-
tions; besides, he is the slave of fashion, and cannot,
like the savage, dress and appear as he pleases : he
has a wife and children to attend to and provide for,
and all his spare moments must be devoted to them.
Does such a man enjoy one moment of liberty? No;
every moment has its appropriate duties, which he
must slavishly perform, or he is a disgraced man. It
is true, his slavery is self-imposed in a great measure.
This only shews that civilized man does not desire

APPENDIX. 285

liberty. "Was there ever a white savage — we mean
one of the Caucasian race — except the wild Boy of
Hanover? The Greeks and Romans were very lavish
of the term barbarian, but we doubt whether they
ever saw a savage. Herodotus treats of men without
heads and with eyes in their breasts, in Africa, but
says not a word of men with black skins and woolly
heads. His learning, which embraces on this subject
all known by his countrymen, only extended to the
limits of civilization. Have the whites been civilized
in some degree from the days of Noah, or did civ-
ilization in the middle ages spread with electric speed
through Norway, Sweden, Lapland and Russia? It
matters not which proposition be true. The white
race has either been always civilized, or has evinced a
remarkable aptitude to adopt civilization ; they required
no missionaries and colonization societies to civilize
them.

Alexander Everett, a Northern gentleman, in a work
on America, contends that civilization had its birth with
the negroes, and that the rest of the world derived it
from them. In locating the birth-place of civilization,
he very nearly concurs with a majority of the learned.
The records of history and the remains of art alike de-
signate the banks of the lower Nile as the cradle of civil-
ization. For four thousand years, certainly, the negro
race has been in immediate contact with civilization. A
dense population, without interruption or interval, for
ages before the time of Pharaoh and Moses, extended
along the Nile from the Pyramids and Thebais to the
negroes along the white Nile. Between Thebais and

286 APPENDIX.

the negroes, an interval of a few hundred miles was set-
tled by people of Arabic descent — a people from the
days of Abraham always more or less civilized. Yet
with all the advantage of contact with civilization for
four thousand years, not a single negro was ever re-
claimed from his savage state till he was caught, tied,
tamed and domesticated like the wild ox or the wild
horse. Talk of sending missionaries to such a people !
Why, millions of missionaries have been side by side
with them for four thousand years, and none but the
slave-dealer ever made a convert. War, pestilence and
famine are the best missionaries to teach civilization, (ex-
cept the conjunction of a thin skin and a hard frost,) for
necessity is the mother of invention, civilization but ac-
cumulated invention, and war, pestilence and famine the
great necessities which prompt men to invent, and teach
them to remember and improve what they invent. A
people so imbecile in intellect, or so improvident as not
to be civilized by these great necessities, can only be
civilized by slavery. The horse and ox will not willingly
submit to the yoke to provide for the exigencies of winter,
however eloquently you discourse to them on the necessity
and propriety of such conduct ; no more will the negro.
A crazy poet or an Irish orator (in love with universal
emancipation,) would permit the horse and the negro to
luxuriate in liberty in the summer and starve in winter.
Not so a sensible Englishman and profound philosopher
like Carlyle, to whom we are indebted for this illustra-
tion. He thinks the liberated negroes in the West In-
dies are no more operated on in the regulation of their
lives, by reason, than the horse or the ox. But like the

APPENDIX. 287

ox and ass, the negro may be domesticated; he is not
like the Indian of America, an animal ferce naturae.
The Indian, like the savage races of Canaan, is doomed
to extermination, and those who most sympathize with
his fate would be the first to shoot him if they lived on
the frontier. God did not direct his chosen people to
exterminate all races; such as were fit for slaves they
were ordered to make slaves of. Despite the mawkish
sensibility of the age, practical men are, without the aid
of immediate revelation, pursuing the same course; they
slay the Indians hip and thigh, as in the days of Moses
and Joshua, and enslave the negroes. " There is nothing
new under the sun." This is all right, because it is
necessary. Father Bacchus (when drunk, no doubt,)
and the last exhibitor of wild beasts in New York, (Quid
non mortaliq pectora cogis, auri sacra fames,') drove
lions to their cars ; yet lions to-day are as useless and
ferocious as in the days of Bacchus ; and the Indian of
to-day is as fierce and wild as those who met Columbus
on the beach.

" Like the fox,
"Who, ever so tame, so cherished and locked up,
Will have a wild trick of his ancestors."

In his proper sphere, we love and respect the negro.
He is eminently docile, imitative and parasitical. He
will not go to Liberia, nor to the West Indies, because
he has too much good sense to trust his fate to a commu-
nity of negroes. He knows he is the ivy, and would
cling to the white oak, not to the ivy, for support. He
respects, as we do, some of the Abolitionists, because
many of them are men who will make any sacrifice of

288 . APPENDIX.

their time and money to achieve what they think right.
They are crazy Quixotes, no doubt, but their high aims
and lofty disinterestedness make them far more respect-
able than they would be as plain, plodding farmers of
La Mancha. Don Quixote mad, is the noblest, because
the most chivalrous and disinterested of all the heroes of
Epic poetry ; he is but a drivelling, penitent dotard when
he recovers. We would as soon stop a crusader or a
fox-hunter in mid career, and prove to him the folly of
his pursuit, as cure these Abolitionists of their madness.
Such illusions afford so much higher pleasure than the
sober realities of life, that it is the part of true philos-
ophy to cherish, not dispel them. Much the larger por-
tion of the abolitionists are, however, men of very dif-
ferent characters — Catilines and Jack Cades, men of des-
perate fortunes and desperate morals, who make as fierce
war on landed property at home as they do on slavery
abroad. The negroes despise the Clay clique of Coloni-
zationists, because, believing slavery morally wrong, they
have not the courage to say so, nor the justice to give
the slave up. If slavery be wrong, the abolitionists are
right. We say to the colonizationists, you cannot send
the free negroes away. They have felt the coming storm,
they have intermarried with the slaves, they have hired
themselves to the farmers, and cling and cluster about
the penates at the very horns of the domestic altar.

Hie Hecuba, et natse necquiquam altaria circum
Precipites atra, ceu tempestate Columbae
Condensse, et Divum amplexse semulacra tenebant.

No ruthless Pyrrhus shall tear them thence. They
are the guests of the farmer, and the Turk holds not

APPENDIX. 289

hospitality half so sacred as the Southern fanner. His
Louse is his castle, which he will defend to the last
extremity against all intrusion. The barons of Ituni-
mede have their exact prototype in the Southern farmer.
Better beard the lion in his den than touch any thing
that has entered the sacred precinct of his farm.

But the free negro is not only the guest ; he is, for
the time, the property of the farmer; and Shakspeare
has well expressed the English sense of property, from
the lips of an Italian speaking of his wife :

Petrttchio. — I will be master of what is iny own ;
She is my goods, my chattels ; she is my house,
My household stuff, my field, my barn,
My horse, my ox, my ass, my any thing,
And here she stands ; touch her whoever dare.

Thus will the farmer defend the free negro who has
selected him for his patron and master. Whilst on the
subject of Shakspeare, we would invite those who think
that slavery degrades the character of the slave, to read
the play of " As you like it." They will find old Adam
a more elevated character than any anti-slavery man that
ever lived — and the character is true to nature.

"Adam. — Master, go on, and I will follow thee
To the last gasp, with truth and loyalty."

Equality begets universal envy, meanness and unchari-
tableness — slavery elevates and purifies the sentiments of
master and slave.

To return from this digression — very many of the free

negroes, alarmed by the portentous signs of the times,

threatening them with extermination or expulsion, have

attached themselves to white masters. Will our legis-

N

200 APPENDIX.

lators sanction and encourage these contracts, or will
they send them all to Africa? Suppose the project suc-
ceeds, and all the free negroes are shipped off — how long-
will it be before we are called to send off our slaves also ?

Northern abolition quieted and the free negroes sent
off, may not gradual emancipation rear its head and prove
a worse enemy, because a domestic one, than any with
which we have had to contend ? But a small portion
of the Southern press even now undertakes to justify
slavery, to maintain that it is right in the abstract,
morally right ; that it is expedient or profitable. Will
not this press, when foreign interference is quieted, and
the free negroes removed, become the advocate of grad-
ual emancipation? .As they say not a word to justify
slavery, we presume they think it wrong; and if so, it is
their duty, as conscientious men, to embrace the first safe
occasion to get rid of it.

The Abolitionists themselves furnish the most conclu.
sive evidence that slavery must exist in every society
until human nature itself is changed, Nay, they pro-
pose to change all man's nature, in order to fit him for
that social equality, that community of property, and of
other things more sacred than property, which they
would erect on the ruins of our present system of societj^.
The Ohio ladies hate slavery, and seeing that marriage
brings about one of the forms of slavery, to be consis-
tent, they will have no more marriages after the old
fashion. Separate property, too, gives power to those
who hold property to command the labor of those who
hold none. " Property," say they, "is a thief!" and
must be abolished. The Bible commands wives to obey

APPENDIX. 291

their husbands, and slaves their masters ; the Bible must
be cast into the flames ! Christianity and Socialism are
deadly enemies. But after all the institutions of society
are destroyed, families abolished, churches demolished,
the Bible burnt, and property held in common, still they
have the candor to admit that the selfishness of human
nature would for a time disturb the harmonious working
of their system. They promise us, however, that a few
generations would change and perfect man's nature, and
then Socialism would work admirably. At the end of
the time we suspect they would become converts to the
sage reflection of Christopher North : " There is a great
deal of human nature in man V We treat the Abolition-
ists and Socialists as identical, because they are noto-
riously the same people, employing the same arguments
and bent on the same schemes. Abolition is the first
step in Socialism ; the former proposes to abolish negro
slavery, the latter all kinds of slavery — religion, govern-
ment, marriage, families, property — nay, human nature
itself. Yet the former contains the germ of the latter,
and very soon ripens into it ) Abolition is Socialism in
its infancy. Ladies of Ohio ! Horace Greely ! Socialists
of France ! Is it not so ?

SLAVERY JUSTIFIED.

THE SUBJECT CONTINUED.

Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet: an Auto-biography: has

recently "been the subject of review in the Edinburgh,
the North British, and Blackwood. Each of these
able Reviews admits that Alton Locke, in the main,
gives a fair picture of the state of the poor in England,
and that their condition is intolerable, and daily grow-
ing worse. Blackwood and the North British Review
farther admit, with the Socialists, that this desperate
condition of the poor is owing to free competition, or
liberty ; and even the Edinburgh, with all its love for
political economy, distinctly alleges that a cure for the
sufferings of the working classes may be found by re-
curring to the old order of things : — feudalism, vassal-
age and serfdom. It further appears from these Re-
views, that socialism, with thinking men, is almost uni-
versal in England. Except the Edinburgh Review, and
a little clique that adhere to it, all men agree that free
competition has brought on the evils under which the
Empire is suffering, and that free competition must be
checked and corrected, or the Empire be subverted.
Now free competition is nothing in the world but the
absence of domestic slavery; and these Reviews, ail
though afraid to use the word, do in effect distinctly
admit that the intolerable condition of the working
classes is owinu to the absence of that form of domestic

APPENDIX. 293

slavery which afforded support and protection to the
poor in feudal times. Experience has universally
shown, that the slavery of the working classes to the
rich, which grows out of liberty and equality, or free
competition, is ten times more onerous and exacting
than domestic slavery. The bathos of human misery is
to be a slave without a master. Such is the condition of
the poor in the free States of Europe ; they are slaves
without masters. They have no houses, no property,
none to protect them, none to care for them. In the
fierce competition for employment, the intense struggle
to get a livelihood, and the ruinous underbidding it oc-
casions, we see the rich devouring the poor, and the
poor devouring one another. This process is well de-
scribed by the Chartist, Crossthwaite, in Alton Locke :

" It is a sin to add our weight to the crowd of arti-
sans who are now choking and strangling each other to
death, as the prisoners did in the black hole of Cal-
cutta. Let those who will, turn beasts of prey and feed
upon their fellows; but let us at least keep ourselves
pure. It may be the law of political civilization, that
the rich should eat up the poor, and the poor eat up
each other. Then, I here rise and curse that law, that
civilization, that nature. Either I will destroy them or
they shall destroy me. As a slave, as an increased
burden on my fellow-sufferers, I will not live. So help
me G-od ! I will take no more work to my house, and I
call upon all to sign a protest to that effect."

England is a Garden of EJcn, in which the birds of
the air, the fishes of the sea, and the beasts of the field
participate equally with the owners of the soil in the

294 APPENDIX.

fruits of the earth. The working man alone, who has
made this garden to blossom like the rose, is excluded
from its enjoyment. Hiatus, valde deflendus! And
he is excluded simply because he is not like the horse
and the ox, and the sheep, the fish in the pond and
the game in the preserves, the property of the owner of
the soil. Make him also property, and he would be
better fed and cared for than the brutes, for he is more
valuable property; and besides, it is more natural for
man to love his fellow man, provided that fellow man
be his dependant or his master, than it is to love brute
creatures. God, when he created the world, established
a community of goods, not only between men, but also
let in the brute creation to their full share of enjoy-
ment of the fruits of the earth. An attempt has been
made in Southern and middle Europe, for the last
century or two, to establish a new order of things on
the ruins of feudalism, which was a modification of the
old order. This attempt has signally failed, as is at-
tested by almost daily revolutions, the starving condi-
tion of the working classes, and the general prevalence
of socialist doctrines, which doctrines propose the total
subversion and re-construction of the social fabric.
We entirely agree with the socialists, that free compe-
tition is the bane of modern society. We also agree
with them, that it is right and necessary to establish in
some modified degree, a community of property. We
agree with them in the end they propose to attain, and
only differ as to the means.

We do not believe that any new discoveries have been
made in moral science for the last four thousand years,

APPENDIX. 295

or that any will hereafter be made. In the remotest
antiquity, men had the same lights of experience be-
fore them that we have to-day, and they were wiser men
and profounder thinkers than we, because their atten-
tion was not divided and frittered away, by a thousand
objects, wants and pursuits, as ours is, in consequence
of the many discoveries in physical science. The an-
cients led simpler lives, were harrassed by fewer cares,
had their minds exercised on fewer subjects, and were
therefore wiser men than we. Their works are imper-
ishable, and have a reputation as wide as the world.
The fame of the best of ours is ephemeral and local.
It is to them we should recur for lessons in government,
rather than look to our cotemporaries or indulge in rash
experiment. Thousands of years before the days of
Moses and Numa, Solon and Lycurgus, the field of ex-
periment had been exhausted, and they no doubt were
aware of the results of those experiments, and profited
by them.

So little has human nature changed, that we find the
men of to-day, with all their virtues and vices, passions
and peculiarities, more exactly and faithfully portrayed
in the Old Testament, and by the Greek and Latin
poets, than by any English or American author of the
present day. It is with human nature that- govern-
ment has to deal, and we should look back to th os
who understood it best, to learn how to deal with it.
The Socialists expect to organise society on entirely new
principles. Society every where is much alike and of
gradual growth. It is the result of the passions, the
motives, the affections, and the selfishness of human

296 APPENDIX.

nature. These are much the same in all ages and in
all countries. What madness and folly, at this late
clay, to form society for human beings regardless of hu-
man nature. Yet the Socialists are guilty of this folly,
and gravely propose to change man's nature to fit him
for their new institutions. How much more wise, pru-
dent and philosophical it would be to recur to some old
tried forms of society, especially as we shall presently
show that such forms of society have existed, and do
now exist, as will remove all the evils they complain of,
and attain all the ends they propose.

A community of property, in some modified degree,
existed in all the states of antiquity, whether savage or
civilized, and continued to exist under the form of feu-
dalism throughout the dark ages. This community of
property existed in two forms. The one form, universal
among savages, is where the lands belong to the State
and the individuals composing the State have a com-
mon right of enjoyment in those lands. Society may
get along very happily under this order of things. Nor,
indeed, is it wholly inconsistent with the advance of
civilization. Every one recollects the example of Sparta,
when there was no separate property in lands, and in
modern times the Peruvian Indians, the most civilized
in America, held their lands in common. The few in-
stances, however, of this kind of community of pro-
perty among civilized nations, shows that it is adapted
only to the savage state. The other kind of community
of property, which is at least as old as civilization itself,
will require some pains to explain, because we are the first
who have treated it in this light. No doubt the same re-

APPENDIX. 297

flections are daily passing through thousands of minds,
that now pass through ours, and we but give a new
name to an old thought. This latter kind of commu-
nity of property exists where separate ownership hav-
ing been acquired in all the soil of a State, those who
own that soil own also those individuals who cultivate
it. A beautiful example and illustration of this kind
of communism, is found in the instance of the Patri-
arch Abraham. His wives and his children, his men
servants and his maid servants, his camels and his cat-
tle, were all equally his property. He could sacrifice
Isaac or a ram, just as he pleased. He loved and pro-
tected all, and all shared, if not equally, at least fairly,
in the products of their light labor. T\ r ho would not
desire to have been a slave of that old Patriarch, stern
and despotic as he was ? How quick he would have
beheaded a Yankee abolitionist who had abused his
open hospitality to entice away his slaves. Poor Ha-
gar ! wert thou deluded by some vender of quack medi-
cines and wooden nutmegs ? How many Hagars, starv-
ing in the wilderness, may now be found at the North ?
Nay, it is worse than a wilderness to them, for they are
surrounded by luxuries which they cannot taste, and
by fellow beings whose hideous scowl of hate aggra-
vates their woes. Pride, affection, self-interest, moved
Abraham to protect, love and take care of his slaves.
The same motives operate on all masters, and secure
comfort, competency and "protection to the slave. A
man's wife and children are his slaves, and do they not
enjoy, in common with himself, his property ? As he
advances in age and his wants become fewer, his chil-

298 APPENDIX.

dren most always get the lion's share. Look to a well
ordered farm and see whether the cattle, the horses, the
sheep, and the hogs, do not enjoy their full proportion
of the proceeds of the farm. Would you emancipate
them too? Why not? Liberty and idleness are as
natural and agreeable to them as to slaves.

Men love the brute creatures that belong to them.
It is the law of God impressed on the heart of man
that secures good and kind treatment to the brutes, far
more effectually than all human law can do. The same
law of God makes man love his slaves far more than
he does his horse. The affection which all men feel
for what belongs to them, and for what is dependent
on them, is Nature's magna charta, which shields, pro-
tects and provides for wives, children and slaves. The
selfishness of man's nature, which occasions all the
oppression of the weak by the powerful, the poor by
the rich, in free society, is the very instrument which
Providence in his wisdom has chosen to protect the
weak and the poor in a natural and healthy state of
society — that is in a society where domestic slavery ex-
ists. Ye meddlesome, profane, presumptuous abolition-
its ! think ye that Grod has done his work imperfectly
and needs your aid ? He that takes account of the
sparrow, has he no care for the slave ? Is he waiting,
and has he waited for four thousand years, for you to
do his work ? Must you steal the negro before he
can save his soul ? Are not the negroes whom you
have stolen and freed, ten times more vicious than our
slaves? Has Grod permitted slavery to exist so long
and so generally, because he knew no better, or be-

APPENDIX. 299

cause he was afraid to denounce it, or was he waiting
for you to help hi in ?

In the February No. of the North British Review,
in a critique on Sir Charles Lyell's Travels in North
America, we find the following singular and contra-
dictory language. "We say contradictory, for if " self-
interest and domestic feeling combine to surround the
slave with every blessing," what becomes of the
"cruelty and injustice," the " sound of the whip and
the clank of the chain?" Does domestic feeling ex-
hibit itself in this way ?

" Could we look at the slave in his simple humanity,
without regarding him as a being of the future, we
should view him as the inmate of a luxurious house,
with all the blessings with which self-interest and do-
mestic feeling combine to surround him. Under this
bright phase, and in striking contrast with the in-dwel-
ler of the work-house, or the laborer in the factory, we
are disposed to forget the horrors of the middle passage,
and shut our ears to the sound of the whip and the
clank of the chain. But when the mind's eye rests
upon the precious jewel — the white soul which the clay
cask encloses — eternal truth recoils from the sight of a
spirit in shackles, and immortal affection clasps in her
warmest embrace the victims of cruelty and injustice."

We suppose the writer thinks there are no slaves in
heaven, but plenty of savages, cannibals and free ne-
groes. " The Devil can quote scripture for his pur-
pose," but we think this would puzzle him.

If any doubt our theory, that domestic slavery doe3
establish a fair community of goods, we cite them to

300 APPENDIX.

the facts. Look to the old Patriarchs and their slaves,
to the feudal lords and their vassals, or come to the
South and see our farms. See the aged and infirm,
the women and children, on every farm, more tenderly
watched over and better provided for, than the sturdy
and laborious. Grod intended, no doubt, that those who
most needed sympathy, assistance and attention, should
have most of it. Put your own house in order, ye abo-
litionists? When the women and children, the sick
and the aged, in your laboring class, are secure of the
same ample provision, sympathy and attention as our
slaves, then, and not till then, offer your advice to us.
But we have said the slave is secure of a fair pro-
portion of the profits in the community of property
which grows out of the institution of domestic slavery.
We will explain how this happens, and cite facts to
prove that it is so. As man rises in the scale of civi-
lization his wants increase, his skill and capacity for
production increase pari passu. As a slave, he needs
more and is entitled to more, of the products of the
joint concern, than the mere newly imported savage.
As he assimilates himself to his master, his master's
attachment to him increases ; he is made a mechanic, a
dining-room or body servant, and is treated very differ-
ently from what we call " out hands." Each, however,
has his wants supplied. The negroes first imported to
this country were badly clad j clothes to them were an
irksome incumbrance. Our male field hands even now
generally prefer a bench by the fire and a blanket, to
the finest feather bed in the world. They are but grad-
ually learning to like plank floors to their houses. The

ArPENDIX. 301

masters are more ready to supply their wants than they
are to acquire them.

There is another law of our nature that secures to
the slave his right. Place men in the relation of
master and slave, and the wiser and more strong
willed invariably rules. It is so in the case of man
and wife, father and child, and slaves have of-
ten been " a power behind the throne greater than
the throne itself/ ' and thus ruled empires. Negroes
do not rule their masters, because of the inferiority of
race, but they are better treated as they advance in
morality and intelligence.

Besides that domestic slavery does away with com-
petition, so ruinous to the working classes in free
countries, and occasions a community of profits if not
of property — it supplies another great desideratum
of the socialists, and, indeed, of the political econ-
omists too : it brings about the Association of
Labor. This result, too, is obtained in a better form
than any we have seen suggested by the Socialists.
They propose only to associate men of the same trade.
Domestic slavery profitably associates men, women and
children, mechanics and common laborers. On a farm,
under the supervision of one master, who supplies the
skill and capital, all ages and sexes can find appropriate
and profitable employment. Set the slaves on a farm
free, and leave each to get employment, and however
disposed to work, the products of their labor would not
sit half what they we»e before. Much time must be
lost in looking for work, and they would rarely find
beuations where all the members of a large family could

302 APPENDIX.

get employment. Much loss would ensue from the want
of one common head to find them work and give skill-
ful direction to their labor, and still more from the fact
that each one buying for himself, their wants would be
supplied at retail instead of wholesale prices.

This association of labor and capital, by means of
dome&tio slavery, would remove another evil that be-
wilders, staggers and confounds Malthusians, Economists
and Socialists alike. This is the evil of excessive pop-
ulation, an evil sorely felt through half of Europe, and
irremediable because confined to the most indigent who
have no means of emigrating. If they were slaves,
their masters would send them at once to countries
where population was sparse and labor dear; and they
would be sent off in families, not separated as free peo-
ple generally are when they remove. Thus is slavery
the simple and adequate remedy for the greatest evil
with which mankind is afflicted at present or threat-
ened for the future.

We cannot believe that the Socialists do not see that
domestic slavery is the only practicable form of social-
ism — they are afraid yet to pronounce the word.

An admirable proof and illustration of our doctrine,
that slavery is communism, might be had by making all
the working-men in England slaves to the land-holders,
and requiring by law the land-holders to support them
as we do our slaves. Would not, in such case, the
working-men be joint owners of the farm ? If the land-
holders were also permitted to sell them, or remove them
to the colonies where labor is scarce and dear, it would
be an excellent bargain on both sides. Labor and capi-

-.

APPENDIX. 303

tal would thus be beneficially associated. They do sell
white men now in England, and remove them to dis-
tant colonies, but require as a perquisite to the boon,
that a man should first steal a turnip or shoot a hare-
Many take the boon even on these harsh terms, rather
than starve ; they steal in order to be shipped to New
Holland and sold as slaves. They are willing to en-
counter the disgrace of crime, and be torn from every
tie of friendship and affection, rather than remain in
England and starve. Could the poor of England sell
themselves and families for terms of years, or for life,
or in perpetuity, they would at once have the means of
certain and comfortable support. Removed to new
colonies, they might by extra work and frugality, soon
purchase their liberty again. The situation of the slave
is a good one to amass money, because he may save all
he makes, the master supplying all his wants.

We have often been reminded of the abcurdity of
the law which prevents a man's selling himself, or to
speak more accurately, which refuses to enforce perform-
ance of the contract, whilst observing the character of
the emigration to California. No poor man could get to
the mines, except by deserting the army, the navy, or
the merchant service. The law permitted him to sell
his liberty for five years, and subject himself to hard
fare and harsh treatment, and low wages, provided he
would enter either of those services. He might sell
himself for eight dollars a month, and have the cat
applied to his back gratis once a quarter, but he might
not sell himself for fifty dollars per month to work in
the mines and be well treated. The law, we know, i3

304 APPENDIX.

the perfection of reason, and liberty the greatest good,
yet we can't help thinking, when a strong young fellow
finds his whole capital reduced to his own person,
it would be as well to let him pawn that or sell it, " to
make a raise." It is the only way a poor fellow can
get a start in life sometimes, and it seems hard to pro-
hibit his using, in the way of trade, the only capital he
has left. We wonder it never occurred to the econo-
mists, who so much admire free trade and free compe-
tition, that the denial of this right was part of the re-
strictive and protective system. Laissez nous faire !
Let us sell ourselves if we please !

That the condition of working men, in all old coun-
tries where population is dense, is a thousand times
worse than that of our slaves, is a fact that no one will
dispute. This fact is worth all the theories in the world,
and shows conclusively that the common laborers should
be slaves, in old countries. It is hard for us Ameri-
cans to understand why this must ever be so, for here
population is generally sparse, and working men scarce ;
so that working men are in demand and can get just
such wages as they choose to demand. Mrs. Trollope,
by far the most philosophical traveller who has visited
America, very justly remarked, that the difficulty of
retaining a servant in Cincinnati, showed that there
the master or employer was under obligations to the
servant. The servant might work one day in the week
and get enough wages to live on all the week ; the mas-
ter needed a servant every day and could with difficulty
get one, because masters were more numerous than
servants. The competition was among masters to get

APPENDIX. 305

servants, not among servants to get places. This com-
petition of course continually increased the wages of
servants. We will venture the assertion, based upon
mere theory, that this state of things is already changed
in Ohio — servants have become more numerous than
employers. There is already competition and under-
bidding to get places, because population is dense ; and
we will stake our reputation, that the white servants in
Cincinnati are not as well paid as our negro slaves.
We mean that their wages are not sufficient to secure
to them and their families the same comforts in all sea-
sons of the year, in health, and in sickness, as we allow
our slaves. In a newly and partially settled country
like California, working men have greatly the advan-
tage over mere moneyed men, and slavery is not neces-
sary for their protection. Competition in such countries
is attended with no evils, and greatly promotes the
rapid development of its resources. In settling a new
country, free labor is better than slave labor, because
competition stimulates industry, without impairing the
condition of the laborer. In old countries, every stim-
ulant to increased industry is an injury to the laboring
class, for thereby a few do the work that should employ
many, and thus leave the many to starve. In old coun-
tries, human wisdom can devise no effectual means to
provide for the poor, where lands have become separate
property, except by making slaves of those who hold no
property to those who have property, and thus in fact,
if not in form, establishing a community of property.
The history of the free States of Europe, for the last
sixty years, and the present condition of the poor in

306 APPENDIX.

those States, we tliink conclusively proves this. All
parties admit that society there requires radical change.
They must go back to domestic slavery. Civilized so-
ciety cannot long exist without it. In conclusion, we
will sum up the evidence that establishes this truth be-
yond doubt, independent of all theory. In the slave
States of this Union all classes of society are satisfied
with government as it is ; famine is neither known nor
apprehended, and there is no complaint that the wages
of the working class are inadequate to their comforta-
ble support. In the whole South there is not one So.
cialist, not one man, rich or poor, proposing to subvert
and re-construct society. Society is in a natural,
healthy and contented state. Such was very much the
condition of society in middle and southern Europe
two centuries ago, before feudalism disappeared and
liberty and equality were established. Now, in these
latter countries, famine and revolutions are daily occur-
rences; the poor are discontented, riotous and insur-
rectionary, and the rich, from mere sympathy with the
sufferings of the poor, have become young English men,
Chartists and Socialists, and admit that the organiza-
tion of society is wholly wrong, and the sufferings of
the poor intolerable. "What more proof is needed, that
the diseases that afflict society with them are occasioned
by the absence of domestic slavery, and what remedy
so obvious as to remove the cause of those diseases by
restoring that institution ?

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.

Free Trade, page 7

CHAPTER II.

Failure of Free Society and Rise of Socialism, 3 i

CHAPTER III.

Subject continued, ..... 73

CHAPTER IV.

The Two Philosophies, .... 80

CHAPTER V.

Negro Slavery, ...... 82

CHAPTER VI.

Scriptural Authority for Slavery, . . 96

CHAPTER VII.

Domestic Affection, 105

308 CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VIII.
Religion, page 109

CHAPTER IX.

The Balance of Trade, .... 118

C HAPTER X.

Banks, 125

CHAPTER XI.

Usury, 133

CHAPTER XII.

Towns, Rivers and Roads, . . . 13G

CHAPTER XIII.

Education, 144

CHAPTER XIV.

Exclusive Agriculture, .... 149

CHAPTER XV.

The Association of Labor, . . . 161

CHAPTER XVI.

The Free Laborer's Cares and Anxieties, .

CHAPTER XVII.

Liberty and Free Trade, .... 169

CONTENTS. 309

CHAPTER XVIII.
Head-Work and Hand- Work, . . . page 172

CHAPTER XIX.

Declaration of Independence and Virginia Bill of

Rights, 175

CHAPTER XX.

The Marriage Relation, .... 194

CHAPTER XXI.

Morals of Free Society, .... 196

CHAPTER XXII.

Small Nationalities, ..... 202

CHAPTER XXIII.

The Higher Law, 201

CHAPTER XXIV.

Infidelity and Abolitionism, . . . 205

C H APTER XXV.

Revolutions and Reformations, ... 208

CHAPTER XXVI.

The Slave Trade, 210

CHAPTER XXVII.

Woman's Rights, 213

310 CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

The Summing Up, page 221

APPENDIX.

Slavery Justified —

Liberty and Equality — Socialism — Young Eng-
land — Domestic Slavery, . . . page 226

What shall he done with the Free Negroes ?

No. I,

259

No. ii,

272

No. in,

279

No. iv,

282

Slavery Justified —

The subject continued, .... 293

H.lOQS.O^ 001S *